


We Didn't Know We'd Make It This Far

by NelindeA



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Adventury Story I guess, Alternate Universe, Dan and Phil falling out, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Insomnia, Little bit of graphic injuries, Minor Character Death, They used to be Youtubers but aren't anymore, platonic phan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2019-11-12 07:34:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 52,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18006563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NelindeA/pseuds/NelindeA
Summary: Dan and Phil had a falling out in 2019, but five years later, in 2024, they may have to come together again to fix a mistake from their past.





	1. The Year 2024

Dan Howell sat in the coffee shop, tapping his fingers on the tabletop, in a rhythm that was most definitely to a song playing in his head, but he was too preoccupied with other thoughts to figure out which one. The fingers knew though, and the tapping got increasingly louder as he came to an apparently epic part of the song. 

“Hey!” 

Dan’s fingers stopped and he jerked his eyes up from his laptop to an older man frowning at him from another table. “Would you cut that out, mate?” the man barked.

Dan briefly considered his options. It was either ignore the man, or whip out a sassy remark. He was in favor of the sassy remark option. Of course now he just had to come up with one.

In reality, he probably would have mumbled a “sorry” and done as he was asked, but the universe would never know, because at that moment a girl cried, “Dan? Oh my gosh, Dan?” and eagerly walked over.

“Hi,” Dan smiled at her. “You just caught me being socially awkward in public, so that’s always fun.” 

The girl giggled. “Please, I’m here with my mum,” she said. “And I’m nineteen.” 

“Yeesh,” Dan said. “Time to move away from home, I reckon.”

“Yeah.” The girl tucked her hair behind her ear and bit her lip. “I don’t know, though. It probably sounds stupid but I’m kinda scared to get a roommate. You know, because of what happened with you and Phil…” 

Dan instantly tensed up. “Yeah,” he said. “Well…” he couldn’t think of anything true and also positive to say, so he went with just the positive option. “Just don’t make stupid mistakes, I guess,” he said, trying to laugh. “No, scratch that, because you will make stupid mistakes, and that’s part of life. Just make sure to…learn from them.”

The girl was silent for a moment. “Sorry,” she whispered. “I guess that was probably a sensitive subject for me to bring up, huh? I just…you guys had such a close friendship, and then…”

She stopped, and Dan knew she was trying to think of a nice way to tell him off for being the one to destroy it. And she appeared to be failing. The Internet had never really known the particulars, but everyone did know that Dan had essentially been the one to end Dan and Phil. And that they hadn’t exactly parted ways peacefully. 

Dan smiled at her. “Stupid mistakes,” he said. “They’re gonna happen. But don’t let…what happened to us make you not want to get a roommate, because it’s actually a pretty amazing thing if you find someone you click with.”

“But then why did you…”

“Well just remember how awkward and bizarre our lives were five years ago and take comfort in the fact that what happened to us will never, ever happen to you,” Dan said.  
“Seriously, I can guarantee that.” 

The girl definitely wanted to ask more questions, but just then a woman called “Alison!” and she turned to glance at a woman standing near the door.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Again. I know what happened is your own business, and I had no right to ask, it’s just, well, who wouldn’t if given the chance, you know?” she finished with a nervous laugh. 

Dan nodded, but he was afraid of what he’d say if he tried to respond. 

“It was nice to meet you, though,” she said. 

“You too,” He managed to smile again. “Doesn’t happen that often, anymore.” 

She laughed. “Don’t worry, there will always be some of us that live forever,” she said, waving as she went to join her mother at the door. 

When she was gone Dan stared at the blank, open document on his screen for exactly one second before slamming the laptop shut as hard as he could, giving the elderly man a glare as he sauntered out of the shop. 

He reached for his phone to call a cab and then groaned as he remembered that he’d left in in his apartment. That had been partially intentional, as he’d remembered it just after locking the front door, and then deciding he could go one afternoon without it. 

But the amount of times he’d reached for it and it hadn’t been there was record-breaking.

The Tube it was then. Dan couldn’t help wondering why they hadn’t made a more glamorous and futuristic mode of transportation yet. He knew he wondered that every year, but seriously, he’d seen the kinds of things science could produce if they were motivated enough. The Tube shouldn’t still be this much of a hassle. 

Maybe it was the stress of his journey home, or maybe it was the girl’s words bringing up thoughts that he wasn’t too keen on having, but by the time Dan reached his front door he was feeling very irritated. He slammed the door shut, stomped up the stairs, and gave a heavy sigh as he sank down in his office chair, only to pull up the same blank document and stare at it just as hopelessly. He glanced at his phone that was lying where he’d left it several hours previously, and upon checking it saw that he had two new voicemails. That was kind of an unusual occurrence, so he let them play on the desk as he began pacing around the room. 

“Hey Dan, it’s PJ,” the first one began. “I know it’s been…kind of a while, so I just, you know, wanted to check up on you and see what’s new? I hear you’re a ghostwriter now, so that’s pretty cool.” Dan whipped around and glared at the phone angrily. And where exactly had PJ heard that? His brain asked.

“If you’re anything like I remember then you won’t want to plan anything social,” PJ laughed. “But just call me back when you get the time, all right?” There was a pause. “I miss you, buddy.” 

Dan sighed tiredly. He had never intended to fall out with PJ, and technically he hadn’t, but they’d sort of drifted apart at the same time Dan and Phil had stopped talking. 

Five years ago.

“Okay, bye,” PJ ended quickly, and the phone began moving on to the next message.

“Daniel James Howell,” came the voice of Louise. “If I have to tell you one more time to get that movie review in to me then I’m going to come over there and build my own freaking time machine so that I can send you back in time to hear it all again! Seriously, how hard is a movie review? Do I have to do everything for you? Do you just want me to—” 

Dan actually smiled a little bit at this one. He grabbed the phone, cutting her off, and rang her. “It’s hard because I liked the film and nobody else did,” he said. 

“And what? No one will know it’s you, literally nobody, since you’re making me be your agent so even your clients don’t know who you are.”

“Yeah but I’ll know when I see the negative comments underneath it.”

“So don’t read the comments.”

“Force of habit,” Dan mumbled. 

“Dan, I know you’ve got a thing about opinions, but you also have very strong ones, and you are in the unique position of being able to convey them clearly and intelligently. So go convey, and seriously, I expect that assignment by Midnight. It’s all very well for you taking your own sweet time, you know. You don’t have clients breathing down your neck!”

“Don’t have to, I have you.”

“Rude,” she said. “But seriously, I will come and kick you into the past if I have to.”

“Yeah, you can’t just fall into the time travel business.”

“Hilarious,” she said. “All right, love, I’m gonna go now, so make sure to stay hydrated and go to bed at a reasonable time, but I don’t want you doing either of those things if it means you’ll turn in your assignment late.”

“I won’t turn in my assignment late,” Dan smiled.

“Good,” she said. “Bye, then.” 

Dan was still smiling when he hung up. She was the only person he still actually had phone calls with for a reason, and she was enough for him to actually sit down and write the cursed movie review. It wasn’t difficult once he got into it and just let his opinions flow, but of course being the perfectionist he was he sat writing it over and over, until he finally sat back at almost Midnight and looked proudly at a piece that he was as near perfectly happy with as he knew he would get. He sent it off and then began to wander towards the kitchen, vaguely hoping that something had magically appeared in the fridge since the last time he had checked, which was probably when he’d gotten up that morning and had decided to go to a coffee shop instead of buying groceries. A time machine would be nice now because then he could just go back to yesterday or whatever and go to the shop then. 

“Yeah, or you could go right now, Dan, and that would take the same amount of effort,” he said out loud to himself. Now that he was living on his own and had very little human interaction, his conversations with himself had become much louder. He desperately hoped the walls weren’t too thin to be heard by his neighbors. 

And then, circling back, he realized that probably everything would be closed by now anyway, so yes, a time machine would actually be helpful for once.

He stared hopelessly into the empty void of the fridge and felt some part of his heart crying. For someone who loved food as much as he did, he really was awful at actually keeping any in his house. 

His thoughts began drifting again as he began planning his next course of action, but he was violently yanked out of them as the doorbell gave a shrill ring. 

Dan jumped and had to grab onto the door of the fridge to keep from stumbling. His heart was pounding all throughout his body, which he realized was a ridiculous thing. He’d heard doorbells before. And their purpose was to let him know when somebody was at his door. 

But that was just it. He wasn’t used to the doorbell ringing. Unexpectedly, anyways. The only reason it had rung in the past five years was when something was being delivered, and in those instances he knew it was coming. 

But that definitely wasn’t true at five past midnight. Which meant it was an actual visitor. 

Which meant that it was urgent. Ish.

But Dan was in no hurry to make it to the door, until he heard the shrill ring again and realized that enough was motivation to just answer it already. And when he opened it, he saw the last person on the face of the earth that he expected to. Honestly, couldn’t it have just been Beyoncé or something? That would have startled him less. 

Dan just stood there staring, and the visitor stared at the floor. A very small part of Dan’s brain was telling him that he needed to be absolutely sure he recognized who this was, because it would be terribly embarrassing to call him by the wrong name. But the rest of his brain was screaming of course this is him, do you think there is any chance I wouldn’t know who this is, even if I haven’t seen him or talked to him or followed up on him in any way for five years?

He didn’t even look that different. Older in the face, maybe, like he was now closer to 40 than he was to 30, but as long as he was still dying his hair black you would never know whether any gray hairs had started to make their appearance or not. 

He stuffed his hands awkwardly in his pockets, and he seemed unable to make direct eye contact with Dan, though Dan’s eyes were boring straight into him. But Dan, gripping the edge of the door, wasn’t at all sure what to do now. Most of him just wanted to slam the door shut and run back upstairs. 

But he didn’t. He swallowed a couple of times, and when he was sure his voice would be strong enough, he ventured a soft, “Hey, Phil.”

Phil finally looked up and gave a look that was part relief and part determination. “Dan,” he said. “I…we…maybe I…messed up bad. And I need you to go back with me and fix it.”


	2. The Runaway

**“PJ!” Dan whined. “Phil totally just landed on your hotel there.”**

**“Really?” PJ asked innocently. “Huh, better start paying better attention then.” He moved his piece and then smiled at Dan. “Go ahead.”**

**Dan rolled the dice and glared at Phil. “Seriously? You didn’t notice him either?” He put his hand over his chest and raised his voice several octaves. “Are you guys forming an alliance? Against _me_?”**

**Phil shrugged. “What can I say? PJ and I just have this bond because we’ve known each other the longest.”**

**“Yeah, well, Louise and I have…” Dan leaned over to her and asked in a mock whisper, “What do we have?”**

**“Competitive social ineptness,” she loudly whispered back.**

**“Competitive social ineptness,” Dan repeated proudly.**

**He moved his piece, landing on one of PJ’s several hotels, and PJ cried out, “That’s mine! You owe me** **£750, mate.”**

**“Are you kidding me? That gets me out!” Dan cried. Phil snickered, and then Dan glared at him again. “You know that pits you against PJ now, right?”**

**“Oh.” Phil looked sorrowfully as PJ scooped up all of Dan’s money and properties with a gleeful look on his face. “I haven’t thought this through.”**

**“Vote off the strongest link, Phil, seriously thought you’d have figured that out by now,” Dan said, shaking his head.**

**“I thought I did! I got Louise out!”**

**Louise giggled, and she and Dan watched as Phil and PJ battled it out over several more turns to see who would be the Monopoly champion. It ended up being PJ, to really no one’s surprise, and after a considerable amount of crowing, he finally quieted down, and Dan shifted in his chair. “Okay, so now that I’ve interacted with you all I can go back on the Internet now, right?”**

**“Nope,” Phil said. “We’re going over to Adam’s, remember?”**

**“Oh,” Dan slid further down his seat. “Right.”**

**“I thought that was one of the friends you actually like,” PJ said.**

**“He is,” Phil sighed. “Dan just hates being social.”**

**“Yeah, well, some people are easier to hang out with than others,” Dan said shortly.**

**“It’s not because he’s always talking about inventing time travel, is it?” Phil asked.**

**“No, but when he says that I never know if he’s being ironic or not!” Dan protested.**

**“Inventing time travel would be cool,” Louise said. “He doesn’t have to mention it ironically. Maybe it’s just something he dreams of.”**

**“And Phil would like to take all the corgis and move to Mars, and I’d like to be a highly respected philosopher, and all of us would like to find a game that PJ can’t win at,” Dan said. “We’ve all got dreams, the difference is that this guy actually thinks he’s going to accomplish it.”**

**“Maybe he will,” Phil said. “In his defense he has invented some pretty cool stuff.”**

**“Really?” PJ asked. “Who is this guy, how do you know him?”**

**“He was in most of my Uni courses, and I just liked him because he was tall and he thought the YouTube thing was cool and not weird,” Dan said. “I only introduced him to Phil because I wanted to prove to both that I had other friends, but then he and Phil got along really well, too, and now he’s like our only remaining mutual friend that we didn’t meet through YouTube.”**

**“And he’s really cool,” Phil said. “But yeah, he is constantly talking about how close he is to cracking the time travel code.”**

**“But you said he’s already invented stuff?” Louise pressed.**

**“Yeah, stuff like DNA scanners and memory erasure guns. Nothing that the government doesn’t probably already have.”**

**PJ raised his eyebrows. “Okay, that’s pretty impressive if he’s inventing things we’re not even sure if the government has figured out how to make.”**

**Dan and Phil both shrugged. “I guess,” Dan said. “But it’s still all experimental, and he doesn’t want to like announce his discoveries and have the government breathing down his neck. Not yet anyway.”**

**“Still,” PJ said.**

**“I’m just offended that you double-booked yourselves,” Louise said. “We don’t hang out enough, and now you’re leaving us to go hang out with someone who is probably cooler in every way?”**

**Dan smiled, but Phil rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, the only way Dan will agree to social situations is if they’re all planned for the same day. Which sounds like suicide to me, but he claims it works for him.”**

**“It does,” Dan insisted. “If you plan something two days in a row then you haven’t recovered in time for the second one. If it’s all back to back then it’s easier, and you can spend the next several months recovering.”**

**“Yeah, okay,” Phil said. “But now we look super rude because we have to kick our friends out so we can go hang with a different one.”**

**“But he’s not cooler,” Dan said, and Phil caught the way he looked at his friends, almost desperately. “He’s definitely not cooler than you.”**

**“It’s all good,” PJ smiled. “I’ve got videos to edit anyway, so I’m gonna head out now.”**

**“Same,” Louise said. “Our lives are all just so glamorous.”**

**“Way to make it look like we didn’t just kick you out,” Phil grinned.**

**“Seriously though, I love doing this, so Dan, you’d better believe I’m going to make you do it again in the near future,” Louise said.**

**“I know,” Dan said. “And I wouldn’t dare argue with you.”**

**“That’s right,” she said. “I’ll see you guys later.”**

**“Bye, you guys,” PJ grinned. Once he’d seen them out, Phil turned to Dan, who was lounging on the sofa and staring off into space.**

**Phil’s forehead wrinkled slightly. He didn’t really trust Dan’s method of piling all the social events in one day so they could get them over with. “Are you gonna be okay?” he asked. “Because I’m fine with cancelling, right now.”**

**Dan smiled. “I’ll be okay,” he said.**

**“Dan. You need to tell me if you’re not.”**

**Dan laughed and pushed himself up off the couch. “I’ll be okay,” he repeated. “I couldn’t hide it from you if I tried, Phil, you know me too well. So as long as you stick around, I’ll always be okay.”**

…

Phil stared at Dan and briefly wondered whether he was actually going to slam the door in his face. Dan certainly seemed to be considering what step to take next. But then something registered in his face like he should probably be polite now, and he opened the door and let Phil walk in. Which Phil did, timidly, bracing himself for how the furniture would be switched around and how there’d be a new carpet and different art on the walls.

But there wasn’t. It was all exactly as he’d left it. When he’d left, he’d cleared out everything in his bedroom, but there wasn’t a whole lot else in the house that he felt like taking. Most of it was stuff that belonged to Dan just as much as him, and he decided to let Dan throw it all away if he wanted to.

Clearly he had chosen not to. Every photo that Phil had left, every action figure, every DVD and award that they’d won was still in place. The stack of board games appeared untouched as well, though somehow Phil doubted that Dan was playing a lot of board games these days. Phil had also been wondering what Dan would have used his empty bedroom for, but now he was pretty sure it would still be as barren and empty as Phil had left it.

But if Phil had expected everything to be dusty and covered in cobwebs, as if Dan was living stuck in time, he was wrong on that point, too. Dan has always liked things to be clean and tidy, and it all still was. He was clearly making an effort to live in a nice apartment, even if he had made no changes to it in all this time.

But Dan himself was a little bit of a different story, though Phil only let himself notice that for a few minutes. Dan was wearing pajamas that Phil hadn’t seen before, but which still looked old and worn. His curly hair was even more unruly than Phil remembered it being, though Dan still kept it relatively short. And while he looked older than the last time Phil had seen him, he still had that boyish look that Phil was pretty sure would never go away. But his eyes were the thing that made Phil decide to stop observing him, because they looked so dark and heavy that they made Phil feel a twinge of guilt that he immediately banished.

Phil slung off his backpack and tossed it in the corner, before following Dan to the sofa and sitting down.

“So,” Dan said. “Um…can I get you anything? That’s what people say, right?”

A ghost of a smile appeared on Phil’s lips. “It’s okay, Dan, you don’t have to be a good host for me.”

“Good,” Dan sighed. “Because I really don’t have any food, anyway.”

“Why not? Did you finally get sick of all the delicacies the world has to offer?”

“Oh no, believe me, food is still my soulmate as much as ever. I just usually forget to buy any before I run out.”

“Oh.”

“I’m getting a delivery of it tomorrow though.”

“Well, that’s good.”

Both sat in silence for several minutes after that. Phil was nervously playing with his fingers while figuring out what to say, and Dan must have realized that or he would have said something. Surely. Surely he would have said something if he wasn’t waiting for Phil. Why wouldn’t he just say something?

“Have you…” Dan started, and then stopped. “Never mind.”

“What?”

“No, I was just going to ask whether you were still living in London. But that would be bordering on small talk, and…”

“And small talk is awkward.” Another ghost of a smile. “Well, no, I’m actually living on the Isle of Man now, closer to my parents. I’m only supposed to be in London for a week.”

“Okay…is that why you’re here?”

“No.” Phil sighed. “No, coming here was completely unplanned.”

“Well you can’t just announce that we need to go back and fix something and then shut down. So, why’d you come? What did we maybe mess up?”

Phil hesitated. “It’s…a little hard to explain.”

“Well, you must have been willing to try, or you wouldn’t have come.”

Phil hesitated again. “So, um, you know how we thought she was dead?”

Dan frowned, and then squinted. “And by ‘she’ I’m guessing you mean…”

“Yes, I mean her. Who else would I be talking about?”

“Yeah…I know.”

“Yeah. Well, she’s not.”

“She’s not what?”

“Not dead.”

“What do you mean she’s not dead?”

Phil sighed. “I told you it would be hard to explain.”

“You haven’t explained anything, Phil! Of course she’s dead, and all you’re doing is denying it!”

“No, seriously. I was just in a shop and I looked up and she was staring at me!”

“And what, she ran into your arms and you had a tearful reunion?”

“Not—no not exactly, she just kind of looked me up and down and said, ‘Interesting, I wouldn’t have thought you’d stick around.’ And then I just ran.”

“You ran,” Dan repeated.

“Well yeah! I thought she was dead, remember?”

 “How old was she?”

“About 16.”

“Okay, so that rules out the fact that you saw her ghost. It was just some random teenager, Phil.”

“It wasn’t. It was her. And then when I ran out she called after me, ‘I’m going to find you two, I just think you should know!’”

Dan paused. “Well that’s just creepy. But it’s not the first time a girl has threatened us with that.”

“But it gets creepier. Because then I passed another shop with the radio blaring, and it was saying to look out for some runaway teenager with a government weapon…”

“Phil. Do you even hear yourself.”

 “It was her, Dan. I swear it was.”

“What was she running away from?”

“What?”

“The radio said she was a runaway. What was she running away from?”

“Oh…it said a foster home, I think.”

“Yeah, they wouldn’t put that on the radio.”

“Well the government weapon scared them.”

“If it was her, how could she have gotten a government weapon?”

Phil just looked at him, and Dan sighed. “Okay, yeah, I concede that that’s possible.”

“So you believe me?” Phil asked.

“I didn’t say that,” Dan said. “Because I still say it’s impossible that she survived.”

“Well technically we never saw her body…”

“That’s because she blew up in a bloody explosion, Phil. We had to take Charlie’s word, and why would he have lied to us?” He thought for a moment, then said, “Are you _sure_ it was—”

“Yes, I’m sure, Dan, the girl they’re looking for has the same name and everything!”

Dan paused. “Well,” he finally said. “I have never before so strongly felt my life crumble before my eyes. And that’s saying something.”

“She looks so different now!” Phil gushed. “Her hair is so long, and she’s so tall and beautiful, and she’s all super edgy and punk…”

“Okay, no need to sound so proud.”

“Well I am. My little girl is all grown up.”

“She’s 16, Phil. And she’s not yours.”

“Ha!” Phil pointed at him. “You just spoke about her in the present tense.”

Dan blinked at him in surprise, and then squinted again. Phil stared back at him, watching his eyes, as if he could see the thoughts that were racing around inside his brain. “Okay, fine,” Dan said. “Say she’s actually alive and you actually saw her. Why’d you say we have to go back? It’s not like we can change anything, because, as Charlie told us over and over, we can’t cross our own timelines.”

“I know. I don’t know why we’d need to go back, I just…I’m kinda scared about her just roaming the streets like that. Especially if we were the cause of it.”

“Well,” Dan said. “I don’t think there’s anything we can accomplish by going back, so let’s just call Charlie and ask what happened.”

“I tried that,” Phil admitted. “Apparently he changed his cell number.”

“Of course he did.” Dan sighed. “So, what, your solution is to just break the rules and put yourself through that torture?”

“What, time traveling? It’s not _torture_ , it just…”

“If it makes you feel dizzy every time than it’s torture,” Dan said.

“Well,” Phil said slowly. “It’s been a while, maybe I won’t get sick anymore.”

“No, what will happen is you’ll feel even worse because your body isn’t used to it anymore.”

“It’s not like we were doing it constantly back then.”

Dan leaned forward and put his chin on his folded hands. “Whatever. We still can’t cross our own timelines.”

“Technically the rule was that we couldn’t _interfere_ with our own timelines. We can just watch from the sidelines without interfering.”

“Yeah, because that was so easy for the Doctor to do.”

Phil had no response to that, so he just sat quietly, again looking at Dan as he watched the thoughts in his head form and dance around and mingle with each other to create a restless, noisy storm. Not that Phil could hear the storm. But he knew Dan could, Dan always could, and he felt another twinge of guilt, sharper than the last one, that he knew he again had to get rid of as quickly as possible. “Hey,” he said. “Charlie taught at King’s College, right?”

“Yeah…?”

“So why don’t we just call them up and ask for him?”

Dan hesitated. “I guess that could work? Maybe? If he’s still there. But no one will be there right now.”

“Yeah I know. But we could do it pretty early in the morning.”

“Okay.” Another silence fell, but this one was more of an awkward one, that Phil keenly felt, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to be the one to break it. He’d have to wait it out until Dan did.

And Dan did break it, finally. “So,” he said. “Have you got a hotel room somewhere or do you want to stay here?”

Phil gave a dry laugh. “Ironic,” he said, “that now you’re asking me to stay, when…” he stopped when he saw the spasm of pain that briefly crossed Dan’s face. “Sorry,” he said quickly, feeling a heat rise to his cheeks. “I…that was dumb.”

 “Yeah,” Dan whispered.

“I’ll take the sofa bed,” Phil said. “I’m assuming you’ve still got it.”

“I do, but you don’t have to take it, I don’t mind…sleeping in the office.”

The twinges of guilt were hardly twinges anymore. They were growing into something more intense, and Phil knew he should be grateful that Dan was looking down at his hands and playing with his fingers nervously. If he looked up at him with those dark, heavy eyes then Phil wasn’t sure what he’d have done. “No,” he said, with a wry smile. “We both know you’d stay up playing video games all night if you do that. No, you can go to bed like a responsible person.” And before Dan could move or say anything else, Phil grabbed his backpack and quickly marched towards the office.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to clear up confusion, any scenes in bolded text at the beginning of these chapters will be from "five years ago."
> 
> So, I don't edit my stories, I usually just write whatever pops into my head, and it's usually good enough. That's how I wrote the first chapter. I had literally no plans, no premise, no knowledge of where it was heading, and yet I posted it, telling myself I'd figure all that out later.
> 
> But then I was like, no, for once I actually want this story to be good. So I actually wrote the whole thing out, and edited over it several times, and now it's...well I'm as near perfectly happy with it as I know I'll get. But anyway, that's why I haven't updated in three months. I'll be updating it weekly though, probably, and I hope you enjoy! Also, I did leave the first chapter untouched, so I just have to live with everything I didn't like about it.
> 
> Also, yes, I am aware that several things in here will be similar to Endgame. But every single similarity was thought of by me and written out BEFORE I saw Endgame, I swear! I just couldn't get this thing edited quickly enough to come out before that movie did. 
> 
> Um, yeah! You should comment and all the other things to tell me what you think, bearing in mind that it is all written out now and I won't be making any changes to it. And kudos makes me happy, too!
> 
> Also, my notes won't always be this long, I promise! Thanks for reading!


	3. Charlie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before we go any further, I would like to point out that the definition of "platonic" is literally "(of love or friendship) intimate and affectionate but not sexual." Platonic friends also do not have romantic feelings for each other. 
> 
> I wrote Phan in this story as platonic, and because it's fiction, I'm not claiming to portray whatever their real relationship may be. That is all.

**Dan was idly drawing upside-down smiley faces on the window of the car when Phil’s phone vibrated. He pulled it out and glanced at it. “Welp, great news, Dan, we’re meeting him in the warehouse,” he said.**

**“Really? I thought Charlie decided we were a lawsuit waiting to happen if we went in there again.”**

**“I don’t know, that’s just what it says.”**

**“Great.” Dan sighed. “Not that the warehouse wasn’t cool, but I also wondered if we were a lawsuit waiting to happen in there.”**

**Phil giggled. “I mean, wouldn’t you want to show off a lab if you had one? He doesn’t have a lot of friends besides us, you know.”**

**“Yeah, because we’re the only ones still nerdy enough to hang out with him.”**

**Phil nodded. “Is that why you feel obligated to actually show up to his social gatherings?”**

**Dan glanced sideways at him. “I don’t know.”**

**The car pulled up in front of an apartment building, and Phil sighed as he glanced up at it. “Okay, I admit that I’d rather just be going to his house than some walk-in freezer.”**

**Dan smiled as they began crossing the street. They walked down an alleyway and behind a brick wall, and Phil could only hope they were remembering the location correctly. It could be reached by a car if it had to, but it had no proper address, and it was meant to be kept secret as much as possible, anyway. The only other people Dan and Phil knew for sure Adam had told about it were his team of four scientists, which consisted of either his friends or volunteers.**

**For being a secret, privately funded lab hidden in a warehouse, it looked very impressive on the inside. Dan and Phil remembered the sight of all kinds of tables and lab equipment set up, some of which they recognized just from playing loads of video games, and some that they didn’t even bother asking questions about because the sight of everyone bustling about with such high energy was just too intimidating.**

**But this time was different when they entered because, for one thing, there was a large, partially damaged white van in the middle of the room, and for another, no one was bustling about. One scientist was on the phone, speaking very urgently, and the three others were bent over something lying just outside the van. One of them looked up and saw them.**

**“Finally! Get over here, you two, he keeps asking for you,” he said.**

**Dan and Phil hastened over to him, and that’s when they saw Adam lying on the ground. But a very different Adam than they were used to. His face was covered in blood, with one eye being swollen shut. His hands were also bloody, and he was pressing them to an equally bloody chest while breathing heavily. But he managed to look up at his two friends and grin. “I did it!” he said triumphantly. “Oh, you remember Charlie by the way, right? My head scientist? And Chris and Joe? And Felix over there on the phone?”**

**“You think this is a time to be making introductions?” Charlie snapped.**

**“Well, I don’t have a lot of time left to do it, do I?” Adam breathed.**

**“What?” Phil looked from Adam to Charlie and back to Adam. “What…happened? What did you do?”**

**“I became the first person to time travel,” Adam smiled, closing his eyes.**

**“Hey!” Charlie pushed aside the other two scientists bending over him and partially lifted him up. “Adam, you’ve got to stay awake, okay, buddy? The paramedics are on their way.”**

**“Are you crazy?” Adam asked, his eyes shooting back open. “They can’t come here!”**

**“No, I know, we’ll drag you outside or something, just hang on, okay?” Charlie was speaking very calmly, but Phil noticed that he was frowning as he inspected Adam’s wounds. “You idiot, I told you not to do it until we figured out how to search the surrounding area…”**

**“Wait, he actually did it?” Dan asked in confusion. “He’s not just raving?”**

**“He probably is, but yeah, that van over there is, as far as we know, the first ever time machine, and Adam has just had a very unsuccessful trip in it,” Charlie said, running his hand through his hair even though the blood on his hands left a dark streak in his white hair.**

**“Unsuccessful?” Adam murmured, as his eyes closed again. “I just went back to the second World War, and returned. How is that unsuccessful?”**

**“Because you landed in the middle of a bombing, you absolute…” Charlie broke off, as he shifted Adam in his arms again. “ _Seriously_ , Adam, you need to wake up.”**

**Adam cracked his eyes open one last time to look at Dan and Phil, who were more or less just standing in complete shock. “I’ve done the hard part,” he said in a very low whisper, so low that Dan and Phil had to crouch down to hear him. “They’ll work out the bugs. But I want you two to have it. The machine. You can do great things with it. Charlie will help you not to do anything stupid, but, you know.” A smile appeared on his cracked lips. “Make sure you do something a _little_ stupid. Otherwise what was the point?”**

**Dan and Phil could do nothing but stare, and as Adam went limp, Charlie seemed to stop fighting. He laid him gently on the floor and calmly checked his pulse.**

**“Is…” Phil wondered if that was actually his voice. “Is he…”**

**Charlie nodded. “Yeah. I mean, close enough, he’s got about 30 seconds remaining, but he’s lost too much blood to be saved in that amount of time, even if the ambulance did get here by then.” He stood up, pulled off his glasses with one hand, and began rubbing his eyes with the other. The other scientists stood by in complete silence, and Phil could think of nothing else to do than to grab Dan’s hand and squeeze it, but he felt comforted when he felt a strong squeeze back.**

**The next two hours or so were kind of a blur, for both of them. They vaguely remembered afterwards that Charlie has asked them to call his parents, and his recently acquired girlfriend, which Dan and Phil hadn’t known about, and tell them what had happened. They remembered being very reluctant to do so, but they did it anyway because Charlie was busy getting rid of the paramedics, figuring out how to make it look like a car crash since everything they were doing was secret, and also arranging for Adam’s body to be picked up.**

**Dan and Phil were released once they’d carried out their grief-ridden task, and they had time to process everything on the way back, and after having dinner and making light conversation through it, it got a little bit easier. But not completely. It wasn’t the first time they’d seen something insane at Adam’s lab. But it was the first time they’d seen anyone get hurt, let alone die. The image of him lying there, covered in blood, breathing out his last right in front of them was an image that stuck with Phil, especially, as he lay in bed that night. After changing his position several times, he decided to just stick with laying on his side in the hopes that that would help calm him down. And if _he_ was feeling restless and unable to sleep, then Dan must be—**

**He heard his door open and a hushed, “Phil?”**

**“Hey,” he whispered back. “Come in.” He never was really sure why he and Dan whispered to each other when all the lights were off. It’s not like there was anyone else around that they might wake up. It just seemed to be something they both carried over from their childhoods.**

**Dan walked over and slipped under the duvet next to him. “Sorry,” he said. “I know this probably isn’t a great night for you, either, but I just…If I can’t get to sleep on a normal night then there was no way…”**

**“Yeah, I was just thinking that. You still want me to try, though?”**

**“Yes, please,” Dan said quietly.**

**Phil pushed himself up into a sitting position and waited until Dan’s head was on his lap. Dan then went completely still, and Phil draped one arm across his back and let the other hand drift through Dan’s hair. He never minded doing this, but tonight in particular he welcomed the distraction. It was calming to listen as Dan’s breathing grew slower and steadier, and it was relaxing to perform the mindless repetition of stroking his hair.**

**“I feel like I should be sadder,” Dan mumbled eventually. “Don’t you?”**

**“Shh,” Phil said, in his lightest voice. “We don’t have to talk about it now.”**

**“I want to, I feel guilty.”**

**“We’re still in shock, Dan. But anyway, he wasn’t our closest friend, even if we were his.”**

**“He had a girlfriend.”**

**“Apparently.”**

**“And we just watched him _die_...”**

**“Dan.”**

**“I know.” Dan sighed. “Shut my noisy brain off.”**

**Phil looked down and switched from running his fingers through Dan’s hair to slowly brushing it away from his face. It seemed to work, and Dan fell silent again as his body eventually relaxed the rest of the way.**

**When Phil was confident that Dan was out, he gingerly pushed him off his lap so that he could slide down and onto his back, and lay looking at the ceiling for a while before closing his eyes.**

**And then, just before sleep completely overtook him, he realized something for the first time. He barely opened his eyes and tilted his head slightly towards Dan. “We have a freaking time machine,” he whispered.**

**And he could have sworn, just as his eyes dropped shut again, that he could see a tiny smile form on the face next to him.**

**…**

Phil was already awake when he heard the shower running at 7 in the morning. He almost wished it had been even earlier, since it wasn’t as if he was doing anything productive by waking up every two minutes with his painful, guilty twinges.

He stood up and made his way to the kitchen, idly poking about in the fridge and cabinets and not finding anything very satisfactory, until the doorbell rang and Phil remembered that Dan had said food would be coming. He almost sprinted to the door, more from old habits than anything else, and dragged his haul back to the kitchen counter. Dan walked in just as Phil had finished unpacking.

“So this got here insanely early,” Phil said. “Why would you even do that to yourself?”

“Sorry,” Dan said, yawning. “I thought I’d be out of the shower before it came.”

“My gosh, Dan, what would have happened if I wasn’t here?” Phil looked up and tried to smile, but stopped when he saw Dan’s eyes. That was a mistake. They were even darker and heavier than the night before, and if this was how he looked after having just taken a shower, Phil hated to think how they looked before. He suddenly realized as well why Dan had scheduled the delivery so early. He quickly glanced away and said, “This isn’t nearly as much food as we used to get.”

“Well yeah. I’m not eating for two, Phil.”

Phil tried to smile again, and was more successful this time.

He took a shower as well after they’d eaten breakfast, and when he entered the living room he found Dan with his laptop in front of him, holding his phone. “I found the number,” he said.

“Nice,” Phil said, plopping down beside him. Dan continued to stare at the phone, and Phil nudged him. “Well?”

“We’re going to sound crazy,” Dan whispered. “He’s the one who saw her die.”

“Well, clearly he didn’t, because she’s alive,” Phil said firmly.

Dan sighed and pressed the call button. He sat perfectly still as he listened to it ring, but Phil leaned over and hovered anxiously. It was startling to him to hear a cheerful woman’s voice asking what she could do for them, but that’s when he remembered that they didn’t have Charlie’s actual number.

“Is there a Professor Kendall still in the physics department?” Dan asked, biting his lip.

“Yes,” the woman replied.

“Could you…” Dan seemed to be struggling with what to ask. “Can we…speak to him? Like does he have a number, or something?”

“Sure,” she said. “May I tell him who this is?”

“Um.” Dan looked at Phil, who just shrugged and nodded. “Dan and Phil?”

There was a very long silence on the other end, and then the woman said in a much graver tone, “I’ll put you through right away.”

“Wait,” Dan said. “Does…do you know who we are?”

“I may have been told to look out for you two, yes,” she said. “He didn’t tell me why, of course, but it was a long time ago. I never thought you’d actually show.”

 “Then why’d he change his freaking cell number?” Phil muttered, but Dan only violently pressed a finger to his lips and glared at Phil with big eyes.

“Do you want me to put you through now?” the woman asked.

“Yes…yeah that’d be great, thanks.”

A pause, and Phil now threw himself into the back of the sofa and began bouncing one knee anxiously.

“Shut up!” Dan said, barely using any voice at all.

“Hello?”

“Charlie!” Dan immediately began coughing. “Hey—hi!”

There was another pause. “Seriously?” Charlie asked. “Now?”

“Well I only freaking discovered she was alive now, didn’t I?” Phil snapped, ignoring the death stare that Dan was giving him.

Charlie sighed. “Okay, I’ll be honest with you, I did wonder if the day would ever come when you’d come to me for answers. But I did prepare for it, and here we are.”

Dan and Phil waited, but he didn’t say anything else. “Well?” Dan asked. “So, that’s it? She’s just alive, and you always knew it, and you let us have a falling out and sink into oblivion just because you couldn’t be bothered to tell us that she was okay?”

“Yes.”

“What do you mean yes?” Phil demanded. “Don’t you understand how much we…” he stopped, and looked at Dan helplessly.

“How much you what?” the scientist asked.

“Doesn’t matter, you should have known,” Phil said.

“There was an explosion,” Dan interrupted. “How did she survive the explosion?”

“Well, she almost didn’t. She was taken to hospital and I wasn’t sure that she’d pull through. But I guess she did.”

“You guess?”

“Just stop being cryptic, Charlie, you’re just prolonging this whole thing,” Phil said sharply.

Another pause, longer this time, and then Charlie said slowly, “Well, she was…being difficult, you know.”

“She was eleven,” Dan said fiercely.

“Yes, but a very intelligent eleven-year-old, with an unknown heritage, who had access to all sorts of crazy dangerous technology. And before you tell me I should have taken that technology away from her, I’ll remind you that it was no use, because she was very clever and she could just make her own.”

“Yeah,” Phil said, sighing fondly, ignoring Dan kicking his foot.

“I know you were never too concerned about it,” Charlie said. “But it was genuinely terrifying, and if we thought it was bad when you were there, it was even worse when you weren’t. She didn’t have typical temper tantrums. Hers were done by doing something incredibly dumb, and coming away unscathed in triumph. That’s what led to the explosion. She was showing off, claiming she’d be fine, but then she blew up a lot of the equipment and almost died, and…you know…with your little feud going on…”

“It wasn’t a feud,” Dan said.

“It most definitely was a feud,” Phil said.

“Not then, not until afterwards.”

“Yes, it was.”

“Well whatever it was,” Charlie said. “It was putting _her_ on edge, and it was putting _us_ on edge, and when I wasn’t sure that she was even going to survive I wiped her memory, took her to the police and said I’d just found her, and they put her in a hospital ward, and then after doing a background check and obviously finding no family match, she went into the foster system. And I can tell you, truthfully and honestly, that I’ve not checked up on her since and I have no idea where she went or what she’s been doing. But clearly she didn’t go far.”

“You wiped her memory?” Dan asked. “You sure about that?”

“Absolutely sure. I thought it’d be cruel to just abandon her after all of that, so I got rid of all her memories after the day she met you.”

“But wouldn’t she be missing a lot of time then?”

“Yeah, but she was a kid, that wouldn’t have affected her in the long run.”

Phil looked over at Dan and saw his face start to turn red. He was about to start fuming, so Phil grabbed the phone. “Why did you do that?” he asked as coldly as he could manage. “We could have fixed it. You didn’t have to get rid of her, and you didn’t have to lie to us.”

“I did,” Charlie said calmly. “I did, boys, and I’m sorry, but…you know…remember what I’ve said about not being able to change the future?”

Phil struggled for a moment before admitting, “Yes.”

“It was meant to be,” Charlie said. “And I’m sorry you two had a falling out, but that was meant to be as well. And whatever happens next…”

“Shut up,” Dan snapped. “Just shut up, don’t you dare talk about what was meant to be, we’ve nearly gone _insane_ thinking we killed her, and what do you think she’s feeling right now? Probably not all that much better in regards to her mental health. And _you_ did that. You.”

Charlie didn’t say anything for a moment, but then ventured quietly, “I can only tell you again that I’m sorry. But it had to be done.”

“No it didn’t,” Phil said. “And we don’t have to hear this anymore.” He pressed the button to end the call, and tossed the phone on the coffee table, then sank back into the sofa, imitating Dan, whose arms were folded and whose eyes were staring off into space.

“This is crazy,” Dan muttered.

“I _told_ you she was alive…”

“That’s not even the crazy part. Well…I guess, yeah, it’s pretty crazy that we’ve been living a lie this whole time. But everything else…like you suddenly seeing her…and something was off about his story. It’s too…I mean there’s so many things that could go wrong if he actually did that.”

“I know,” Phil said. “I’m kind of inclined not to believe anything he says ever again.”

“Yeah, well,” Dan sighed. “It’s the only explanation we have to go on right now.”

“But he didn’t erase her memory. Because she definitely knew who I was.”

“Well he did leave her with the day we met her. And maybe she’s heard about us since, from the Internet or whatever.”

“We haven’t been on the Internet since then though.”

“Yeah but we haven’t deleted ourselves off it. All our stuff is still up. I bet we still get new subscribers on occasion.”

“We do,” Phil admitted.

Dan blinked at him, and then yawned and shrugged. “Okay, so the question is what do we do now.”

“Um, go find her?”

“No!” Dan said, which came as a surprise to Phil. He’d just assumed that was the obvious next step.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because we don’t know what she knows or why she’s looking for us. And if she was dangerous then…”

“Oh.” That part of it suddenly dawned on Phil. “Then who knows how dangerous she could be now. Especially if she’s looking for the two people who abandoned her.”


	4. The Machine

**“No, I _told_ you, Dan, it’s not going into the computer, it’s going into…” Charlie sighed and shook his head. “You know what, I already explained this twice, and I’m not going to try to get you to understand it a third time. Your DNA is going to be infused into the machine, and that’s all you need to know.”**

**“Yeah, but that part doesn’t make sense, either,” Phil said. “Why does it need to know who it belongs to?”**

**“It’ll work better if it’s got the same pilot every time,” Charlie said impatiently. “That way it’s got something familiar to work with.”**

**“See, now why couldn’t you have just said _that_ when we asked you the first time instead of going off on some scientific tangent?”**

**“Oh, I enjoyed the scientific tangent,” Dan said. “But yeah, I didn’t get it either.”**

**A message popped up on Charlie’s screen, announcing that the sample was ready to be put in. Charlie’s hand hovered over the button, and he looked up at the two standing behind him. “You sure you both want to do this?” he said. “It only has to be one of you, you know.”**

**Dan scoffed. “Yeah, as if we would ever be able to decide which of us would get to fly the thing.”**

**“But it doesn’t necessarily have to be flown by the owner. As long as the owner is on board, anyone can use it.”**

**Phil shrugged. “I mean I can’t imagine why we’d ever be travelling without the other one anyway.”**

**Charlie nodded. “I don’t either. But after this, you physically won’t be able to.” He tapped the button, and the van began to tremble and shoot off sparks. It stopped after a couple of minutes, and Charlie nodded. “Aaaand you two are now the proud owners of a time machine.”**

**“Finally,” Dan said, rushing over to it. He’s been in the van before, but only when it was stationary. The scientists had taken a few test drives with it, but only to work out all any glitches, and now that it had been deemed safe to fly, and a scanner had been installed to check the surrounding area of the destination, Dan and Phil were finally given custody of the time machine.**

**Phil wandered over casually. “It’s not very glamorous, is it?” he asked. “Why are the first time machines in movies always so glitzy if that’s not how they actually are?”**

**Dan giggled. “I guess because those people always assumed you’d build the machine with the technology instead of injecting an already existing machine with the technology,” he said. When Phil didn’t reply, Dan looked at him and nudged his arm. “Hey. Are you okay?”**

**Phil swallowed. “This is super exciting,” he said slowly. “And if someone just hands you a time machine, well, you can’t just pass that up. But, like, what are we supposed to do with it?”**

**“Umm…and this is just a wild guess, but I’m thinking we travel in time and stuff.”**

**“Shut up,” Phil said, with a quick grin. “Time travel to where though? What do we do? Adam said we could do good with it, but how can we, when we can’t—”**

**“Can’t change the future,” Charlie finished as he walked up, while Dan mouthed the words with Phil.**

**“Yeah. That.”**

**“We don’t have to go anywhere near the future,” Dan said. “Let’s just go to the past for now.”**

**“The past was the future once. You can’t change that either, pal.”**

**Dan rolled his eyes. “Charlie, you are literally taking all the joy out of this. Fine, what can we do then?”**

**“You can go to the past or the future all you want,” Charlie said. “You just can’t affect the way the world is going to progress. You do that and you could erase yourselves out of existence. And so on that note, you can never, ever interfere with your own timelines, because then there will almost inevitably be a version of you that gets erased.”**

**Dan gave a groan. “That’s a lot of rules.”**

**“Too many,” Phil said. “And I’m inevitably going to break them, so why don’t we get someone else to just do this whole time travel thing for us?”**

**“You’re kidding me, right?” Charlie asked. “After I just put your DNA in the machine. I did ask if you wanted to do this, and you said…”**

**“I know, I know,” Phil sighed. “I do want to, believe me, this is literally one of the coolest things that’s ever been given to me. But just…the pressure of suddenly being handed this power when I have no idea how it works, and I’m just expected to do good with it?”**

**Dan nodded. “Yeah, we’re definitely not Spider-man. So I agree, maybe we could get someone else to figure it out.”**

**“Yes, hello, team of scientists over here doing all the heavy lifting for you,” Charlie said, shoving them. “Just get inside, you two, the quicker we go over how to do this the better.”**

**“I didn’t mean like that,” Dan said, following Phil inside. “Because, yeah, you guys have spent a long time figuring all this stuff out, and Adam did, too. But we’ve got no idea what’s going on, and if you don’t label everything on this dashboard in big red letters we’re never going to go anywhere.”**

**“Again, literally just made you two official pilots and owners of this thing.”**

**“I think Dan’s saying what if we get someone else who is super passionate about this stuff?” Phil said. “As in, someone who can continue helping you figure out the mysteries of time travel. Because you couldn’t duplicate what is right here, could you?”**

**Charlie climbed in after Dan and shut the door as he made his way to the driver’s seat. “No,” he said. “I couldn’t.”**

**“So maybe you need someone who can actually figure out how to build the machine with the technology,” Dan offered.**

**“Okay,” Charlie said sarcastically. “You two start interviewing candidates then. But seriously, right now, past or future?”**

**Dan and Phil looked down at the dashboard which reminded them vaguely of what the cockpit of a plane looked like. With the addition of a giant screen in the middle.**

**“Past,” Phil murmured.**

**“Okay,” Charlie said, pressing a few buttons. “Got a specific time period in mind? Remembering of course that we are limited to wherever this thing can drive to, so, you know, it has to be somewhere in central London. Or at least where central London will someday be.”**

**Dan and Phil looked at each other and shrugged. “I don’t know,” Dan said. “How far back can we go?”**

**“What part of travelling through time do you not understand?”**

**Dan sighed impatiently. “You know what I mean. Like, how far back can we go where there will actually be a sustainable planet?”**

**“Dinosaur times.”**

**“Yes!” Phil cried.**

**“No,” Dan said, glaring at Phil. “Just go back to when there were first…you know. People. And civilization.”**

**Charlie nodded and pulled a lever. “Any particular day?”**

**Dan and Phil just shook their heads, and Charlie nodded again. “All right, we’ll keep the day and time, then. The 3 rd of  March, 180 AD, at 1:36 p.m.”**

**The machine began to violently shake, and Dan and Phil instantly grabbed at anything that was nearby. But after about two seconds, the van calmed down, and a sort of mist grew around the windows, followed by a few flashes of blinding light, and for one instant they felt like they were floating, before the car landed again and the mist and light cleared.**

**They were now outdoors, in a field that was surrounded by several clumps of trees, with a tiny farm right in the middle that had a bunch of oxen milling about in a field. The sun was out, in full splendor, which in itself was enough for Dan and Phil to wonder if they were actually still in their home city. They glanced around to see if there were any signs of human life, when they spotted a little girl directly in front of them, clutching the trunk of a tree with one hand, the other over her chest as she breathed heavily.**

**“Yep,” Charlie said. “We definitely just scarred that kid for life.”**

**The three of them silently climbed out of the machine. Phil instantly wobbled, and he grabbed onto Dan’s arm.**

**“Woah, hey, what’s wrong?” Dan asked, grabbing his hand and putting his other arm around him.**

**Phil just shook his head and pressed his face into Dan’s shoulder. “I’ll be fine,” he said, gritting his teeth.**

**“Ohhhh,” Dan said as he suddenly thought of something. “You have motion sickness. Don’t you.”**

**“A bit, yeah. It’s clearing up, though, it was just bad for those first few seconds.”**

**Dan stood perfectly still, holding onto Phil, until Phil sighed and stood up straight. “You good?” Dan asked softly.**

**“I’m good.”**

**Dan nodded, and they both turned to Charlie, who was watching them. Charlie then turned and gave a grand sweep of his arm. “Here we are, gentlemen. Welcome to the past.”**

**The girl was still watching them, and now she hesitantly stepped forward. She was wearing a white dress that looked to Dan like what the Romans used to wear. He supposed they were in the right time period for it, after all. He stared at her for probably longer than he should have, taking her all in, from her laced-up sandals to the single gold cuff just under her left shoulder. Her black hair fell in waves just past her ears, and it was only after noticing all this that Dan saw that her wrists were in chains. And then he felt immensely guilty. How had he not noticed that first?**

**“Hey,” Phil said softly, speaking to the girl, and then gave an awkward kind of cough. “Sorry if we…scared you just then.”**

**“Phil, we don’t even know if she can understand us,” Dan whispered.**

**But evidently she could, because she looked at all three of their faces in turn, her eyes getting wider by the second, until she asked in a reverent whisper, “Did you fall from the sky? Are you gods?”**

**“Yes,” Charlie said promptly.**

**“No,” Dan said, shaking his head. “No, of course not.”**

**Charlie threw his hands up in exasperation. “Have neither of you seen _Ghostbusters_?”**

**“We’re from the future,” Phil said, and then grinned and nudged Dan. “That felt even cooler to say out loud than it did in my head!”**

**“The future?” She asked, coming even closer towards them. “How—how far in the future?”**

**Dan was instantly impressed. That wasn’t a question that you’d think would come up. Especially from someone who had likely never been introduced to the concept.**

**“Like two thousandish years,” Phil said, trying to be casual, but his face was glowing as he turned to Dan again. “We traveled in time, Dan! This is so, so cool!”**

**The girl continued darting her eyes over all three of their faces, as if deciding which question she wanted to ask next. Dan desperately wanted to ask why she was chained up, though he was already pretty confident of the answer, but he didn’t know how to bring it up without seeming rude.**

**But Phil was less scrupulous. “Runaway slave?” he asked, with no hesitation.**

**She looked down at her chains, and bit her lip with a worried frown. Dan wanted to shove Phil for daring to allude to them, but he seemed to understand why she was timid. “I’m Phil,” he said in a softer tone, crouching in front of her. “And this is Dan, and we’re not going to hurt you or turn you in or anything. Oh yeah, and this is Charlie.”**

**“Oi, I’m your designated driver, so be respectful,” Charlie said.**

**“What’s your name?” Phil asked.**

**She stared at them for a while, as if considering whether to respond. “Rachel,” she said finally. “And yes, I’ve escaped from the household I was kept in. She looked past them at the machine and stared at it in wonder. “Is that how you did it? Is is magic?”**

**“I mean, it kind of is, I suppose,” Phil said. “Time travel seems like magic to me, so yeah, I bet cars look magical to you.”**

**She timidly approached it, and then very slowly reached out one hand to touch it. She gave a quick gasp when her fingers made contact, and jerked her hand back. “It’s incredible,” she breathed.**

**“Really?” Dan asked. “All of this isn’t like…freaking you out or anything?”**

**She giggled. “No, not yet. It’s kind of nice to know this exists, however far away it is.”**

**“Well aren’t you the intelligent one,” Charlie said. “A trait that I’m sure is exclusive to you in this time period.”**

**“I don’t know, there’s just a lot of standing around in my line of work. I do a lot of thinking is all.”**

**“That doesn’t sound like work, then,” Dan put in.**

**“There’s work too, sometimes. But, generally, you’re either a labor slave or a show slave. And I was more often the latter.”**

**She suddenly turned her head at the sound of a rustling in the trees behind her. There was a distant sound of voices, too, and her face paled. “I’ve lingered too long,” she breathed, and took off running.**

**But she didn’t get very far, and none of the three standing next to the van had time to react or do anything else before four soldiers came charging out of the trees, blazing past them, and caught up to the girl. Two of them grabbed her, with a third pointing a spear at her, while the final one crossed his arms and began speaking to her, but he was too far away for them to hear what he was saying.**

**“Okay,” Charlie said. “Now seems like a very good time to get in the van.”**

**“You’re kidding, right?” Phil asked. “There’s a little girl over there about to be dragged back into slavery.”**

**“She’s way smarter than she should be at her age. She’ll figure something out.”**

**“Maybe she’s smart because she has to be,” Dan said. “But she doesn’t have to be now, not when we can literally just take her away from here.”**

**“Guys, you two just met her. I’m telling you right now that you can’t save every single person in distress that you’re going to see. And if you want to, then just remember that there are plenty of people in distress in your own timeline that you walk past every day.”**

**“We know,” Phil said. “And you’re right, we won’t be able to help them. But we can help this one.”**

**“Really? And how do you plan on getting her away from four gladiators?”**

**Phil looked helplessly at Dan, who just shrugged and sighed. “Well, it’s easier to be brave when you don’t have to worry about consequences,” he said. “Just keep the car running.”**

**“Wait, we’re actually just gonna barge in and steal her?” Phil whispered, as he followed Dan over to the soldiers.**

**“I don’t know. I keep hoping we’ll be struck with some kind of inspiration.”**

**Phil giggled, but nervously. “I mean, I guess all we have to do is make sure we don’t die.”**

**“Exactly.”**

**The soldier confronting Rachel glanced at them and whipped his sword out towards them. “You dare approach us?” he asked.**

**“Woah,” Dan breathed, but oddly enough, he wasn’t as intimidated by the sword as he was by the half of the soldier’s face that was displaying an intensely purple bruise and several angry scratches. Dan quickly realized that he probably shouldn’t be staring at that too much, however, especially as the soldier’s scowl began deepening.**

**“Sorry,” Phil piped up. “We…um…just are always fascinated when you guys do…whatever it is you’re doing. What are you doing with her, exactly?”**

**The soldier snorted. “Reclaiming what is ours. She has run away for a second time, and she will suffer the consequences.”**

**“Which are?” Dan asked, looking over at Rachel, who was staring at them with big eyes and trying to shake her head as subtly as possible. But Dan could see the flicker of hope in them, as well. If he had to stall until he came up with something clever, then he was willing to do it.**

**The soldier stared at him as well, and then looked them up and down. “Perhaps farmers are unaware of the laws attached to slavery. But it is the custom, as I thought everyone knew, that a slave who is caught once on an escape attempt is forgiven with only a very strict warning.”**

**Rachel squirmed in the grip of the soldiers at the mention of that, which neither Dan nor Phil failed to notice.**

**“But they are killed if they are caught on the second attempt,” the soldier went on. “To prevent them from ever having the chance to do it again.” He turned to Rachel. “So I ask you again, girl, why you would be so arrogant as to think you could escape my sister’s service when I was the one who caught you and brought you back the first time?”**

**Rachel’s face was very pale, and her eyes were looking up at him fearfully, while the soldiers’ grip on her arms tightened. But she suddenly stood up very straight and tilted her head with a smirk. “How is your face, my lord?” She asked demurely.**

**Dan shot a look to Phil, who was already looking at him.**

**The soldier gave a kind of angry, strangled roar, and raised his sword over his head. “You’ve desecrated the face of a nobleman,” he said. “If you would have died with any honor before, you will not know.”**

**“Wait!” Dan said desperately. “I…I’ll buy her from you.”**

**The soldier briefly lowered his sword and laughed. “You couldn’t afford her,” he said. “Even if she wasn’t already condemned to death.”**

**“Yes we can,” Phil said grandly. Dan shot him a look, which Phil did not return.**

**“Indeed,” the nobleman said. “How? What do you intend to buy her with?”**

**“These cows,” Phil said, waving his hand in the direction of the farm. “I mean, these oxen.”**

**Everyone present just stared at Phil, but he just continued looking at the soldier.**

**“How many?” the soldier asked suspiciously.**

**“How many do you want?”**

**“Ten,” the soldier said smugly.**

**“Done.”**

**The smirk slid from the soldier’s face. “You only have fifteen. You would give up more than half your livestock for a child? She’ll be worthless to you. She’s too skinny to do much work. She’s barely eleven years of age. You won’t be able to sell her for very much.”**

**“I’ll give you all fifteen if you’ll hand her over right now with no more talking,” Phil said firmly.**

**The soldier looked at Phil for a moment, and then nodded at his soldiers, who shoved Rachel into Phil’s arms. Phil slid an arm around her and began steering her in the direction of the van.**

**“Wait, what about the oxen?” The soldier cried.**

**“They’re yours, go and get them!” Phil called without turning back, as Dan ran ahead to open the door for them. Phil practically shoved Rachel inside and cried, “Okay, we need to go, right now, before they figure out those aren’t mine.”**

**Charlie stared at her, but he pulled the lever and the van began shaking again. Rachel gripped onto both Dan and Phil’s arms, but when they looked at her, there was no fear in her face, only surprise, and wonder.**

**When the smoke cleared, she stood up and ran to the door, throwing it open. It was raining now, and the farm was gone. She stared out and gave what Dan could have only described as a delighted kind of laugh. She turned back with shining eyes. “That…” she breathed. “That was amazing. Can we do it again?”**

**“Don’t worry, we’ve still got to figure out what we’re going to do with you now, so yeah, you’ll probably be making another trip in this,” Charlie said.**

**Dan stood up with the intention of joining her, but when Phil tried to do the same, he immediately sank back to the ground. “Yep. Nope.”**

**Dan whipped around and knelt down beside Phil. “You okay?” he asked gently.**

**“Yeah, no, I am. I just forgot about the dizziness.”**

**Dan looked at him anxiously, and then up at Charlie. “Is this going to be a regular occurrence?”**

**“We’ll figure something out,” Charlie promised.**

**Phil then turned to Rachel, who was watching him anxiously as well. “I’m fine,” he said, grinning. “I just don’t usually do well in vehicles that, you know. Move.”**

**“But we’re barely even moving. Plane turbulence is more violent than what this is,” Dan protested, more to himself than to Phil.**

**“I know. Maybe it’s the whole forcing my body through the timestream or whatever that’s the problem.”**

**Charlie stood up and walked over to Rachel. “Okay, kid, how’s about we get you out of those now?”**

**Rachel held out her hands obediently, and Charlie pulled a blow torch out of his pocket and began removing her chains. She turned her eyes up towards them, and Dan noticed for the first time that they were grey, and were so clear that he felt like he could see into them for miles. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I…cannot think how you accomplished that, but you did, and I am beyond grateful to you.”**

**Phil’s reaction was to grab her and hug her to his chest. She tensed up with a gasp, but then relaxed. “Sorry,” Phil whispered.**

**She didn’t reply, but she hugged him back.**

**Charlie gave a cough to get her attention. “Okay, so where do we go from here? You got a family you want to go back to, Rachel?”**

**She frowned and shook her head. “They sold me into slavery in the first place.”**

**Dan could feel his blood boiling. “Well, then they’ve lost the privilege to have you,” he said.**

**“Yeah, we’ll just have to take you ourselves,” Phil said.**

**“Wait, what?” Charlie asked.**

**“Yeah, it’ll be great,” Dan said. “You can actually study time travel, because frankly our machine is the worst and we’d love a better one.”**

**“I mean I’m not sure where you’ll stay, because I think we’d get in trouble with our landlord if we just brought in another resident,” Phil said. “But we’ll find somewhere.”**

**“No,” Charlie said. “No no no, this is what I mean by changing the future! You can’t just take her out of her timeline, you have no idea who her descendants will turn out to be!”**

**“Well, just check,” Phil said, turning to him.**

**“What?”**

**“We’ve got a scanner now, right? It scans the area of our destination, but you said it could do other stuff, too. Just check and see if we could take her or not.”**

**Charlie stared at him in exasperation for a moment, and then sighed. “Stand in the middle there,” he said, pointing at Rachel. She complied, and he pressed a few buttons on the screen, frowning and muttering to himself for several minutes, until he finally looked up in surprise. “Woah,” he said.**

**“What?” Dan and Phil asked eagerly and stepping forward.**

**Charlie threw himself over the screen. “Nope, way too many spoilers for you to see. Really I shouldn’t have seen that, either. We’ll have to adjust that when we get back.”**

**“Why, why did you see?” Phil asked impatiently.**

**Charlie said nothing until he’d cleared the screen. “You know how I said you can’t change the future?”**

**“No, actually, I don’t recall you ever mentioning that,” Dan said, rolling his eyes.**

**“You guys can keep her,” Charlie said. “And whatever happens as a result of it, it was always going to happen. Apparently, her IQ is about the highest it can be, as well, so that’s helpful.”**

**“Wait, so we have to take her? It’s not a choice anymore?”**

**“Essentially,” Charlie said. “But you were already going to, so it’s not a big deal. This time.”**

**“Yes it is!” Dan said. “So, what, everything is predetermined?”**

**“No,” Charlie said calmly. “I mean, not exactly. The universe doesn’t choose what choices you’re going to make. It just knows what they’ll be. And apparently, you choose to keep this kid.”**

**Rachel was still clinging to Phil, and now he looked down at her, and then up at Dan. “Are we actually doing this?” he asked. “Are we actually just taking a child from the future and essentially adopting her?”**

**“We’re not adopting her,” Dan said, looking down at her. “We can’t, not officially. Not without involving the police and the government and all that, and we could never explain where we found her.” He looked into her grey eyes again, and if he hadn’t been convinced before, he was now. “Do you want to come back with us?” he asked.**

**“Yes,” she breathed, her eyes starting to shine.**

**“Even after hearing everything we just said? You don’t have to. We can drop you off like a couple of weeks after you escaped, and hopefully they won’t be looking for you anymore.”**

**“I still would have nowhere to go and I’d still be a slave. I’ve always wished for a different world so that I could escape mine, and you two have just extended an offer of it to me! Of course I want to accept it!”**

**Dan looked up at Phil, who nodded, and Dan nodded back. “Okay,” he said. “Then strap yourself in, Rachel, because 2019 is going to be so much weirder than anything that you’ve seen so far.”**

**…**

Dan leaned back into the sofa and yawned, pushing his fingers through his hair. “I hate to say this, but we may have to return to your time travelling idea.”

Phil quickly looked over at him. “Really? You’re willing to do that?”

Dan nodded. “You were right, and this is on us. If she’s been alive, and alone, this entire time, then that was our mistake and we owe it to her to fix it. If we can.”

“But you don’t want to find her right now.”

“Because we don’t know enough right now.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

They sat in silence for a minute, and then Phil jumped up. “Cool, I’ll find us a ride then. You’ve still got the key to the van, right?”

Dan hoisted himself up and leaned over to the table at the side of the sofa. He pulled the drawer open, and after digging around for a while, pulled out one of their pixel people keychains, with a key dangling from it.

Phil sniggered. “Seriously, you left that thing on it? That’s like ten years old now.”

“Hey, it’s just as obnoxiously hard to lose now as it was when I put it on,” Dan said. “But what about you? Are you gonna have to get the key to the warehouse shipped from wherever you’re living now?”

“Nope, I keep it with my other keys,” Phil said.

“How prudent,” Dan said.

“It is! That means I always have it!”

“And what if you lose your keys, Phil? It’d be difficult to get a replacement of that one.”

“Well I didn’t, so…there.”

Dan raised his eyebrows. “Wow. Your fighting talk is still on point, I see.”

Dan waited for “I hate you, Dan” or “Your mum’s fighting talk is on point,” or anything else that Phil usually said when Dan won the whole battle of wits contest, but Phil just pulled out his phone and began, presumably, scheduling some kind of car to pick them up. Dan sighed and retreated to his room until the car arrived.

They were both very silent for the first several minutes of the journey. It was usually about a 30-minute drive with all of the traffic, and if Phil wanted to spend it all with no conversation, then Dan wasn’t about to fight that. But he knew he could handle silence a lot better than his companion could, so he just stared out the window, waiting for Phil to speak first, and yawned.

“Would you stop that?” Phil asked.

Dan jerked his head around to see that Phil was staring out his own window. “Stop what?”

“The yawning thing.”

“The yawning thing. Oh yeah, I’ll just force my body to stop its involuntary functions. Shall I stop breathing, too, is that annoying you?”

“Sorry,” Phil said, now looking towards his lap. “I’m sorry, it’s not really bothering me, persay, it just…” he hesitated, and Dan wondered if he was trying to come up with the second half of that sentence. “It just makes me feel like yawning, too?”

“Phil. I literally can’t control it.”

“No, yeah, I know. I’m sorry, forget I mentioned it.”

Dan continued to stare at him until Phil eventually looked up at him. Phil’s face turned into what may have been a worried kind of frown, as his eyes began scanning over Dan’s face and body. Dan looked away self-consciously. “What?” he whispered.

“You’re so…skinny, you know that?”

“It’s called exercise, Phil.”

“Oh!” Relief seemed to flow into his voice. “Are you still doing that?”

“Exercising? Yeah, I started up again like two or three years ago. I stopped at first because…um…because I stopped YouTube and there didn’t seem to be any point anymore.” That wasn’t the reason and he knew it and he knew Phil knew it. “But then I remembered that exercise helps with sleeping so I started again with the hopes of…that.”

Phil was silent for a moment. “You’re still having the sleeping problem, then?” he asked in a low voice.

Dan couldn’t tell if he was faking his ignorance or not, so he just shot him a glare which he knew had too much guilt in it to be effective. Phil betrayed nothing with his face, but when Dan looked away he ventured, “When’s your 108 minutes?”

“Dunno,” Dan said. “I don’t really pay attention to that anymore. Tonight, maybe. Or tomorrow.” He shifted in his seat and asked, “So, what have you been doing with yourself?”

Phil hesitated. “Seriously?” he asked. “Now you want to engage in small talk?”

“It’s not small talk, it’s catching up.”

“Sure,” Phil said. “Well, PJ I do a lot of video editing now. For film festivals and music videos and stuff.”

“Really?” Dan tried to stop the smile that spread across his face, but failed. “That’s…really cool, that’s what you always wanted to do anyway.”

“Yep,” Phil said shortly.

“But wait, how does the Internet not know this about you? I mean even if someone else in the credits of anything had your same name, that would come to light, so how could—”

Phil sighed as if he’d been expecting the question. “I use a pseudonym.”

“Really? For video editing?”

“Well you were the one who just said my name would get discovered, even buried deep in the credits of some obscure film festival movie. So yeah, I use a fake one.”

“What is it?”

Phil waited a long, long time before answering, before he finally mumbled, “James Striker.”

Dan blinked and then laughed. “Really? I mean Striker doesn’t surprise me, but _James_? You could have picked something cool, you could have had any name you ever fancied, but instead you chose…” He faltered. “You chose…” Phil looked ashamedly up at him as it dawned on Dan the rest of the way. Dan nodded slowly. “Wow,” he said.

“For the record, I definitely don’t think your middle name is cool,” Phil said.

“No, yeah, I know it isn’t.” Another long silence, before Dan asked, “Do you enjoy it? Your job?”

“Yeah.” Phil nodded. “I really do. It’s super satisfying, and I’ve gotten to the point where they kind of just let me have a lot of freedom with it, so it’s really fun now, too. Plus I get to see my family all the time this way.”

Dan smiled again, but a little more wistfully this time. He found himself being happy for Phil, which really wasn’t all that surprising, but what was surprising is how angry he was with himself that Phil’s YouTube career had been cut short, when Dan knew he’d have had so much more to offer. Phil shouldn’t have to work under a fake name, even for something that wouldn’t be seen by the general public. Everything he did should be screamed from the hilltops.

“And how about you?” Phil asked. “How are you still able to afford the rent for that thing?”

“Savings, obviously. We weren’t exactly poor when we parted ways. And you should know that we’re still collecting a good amount of revenue from YouTube.”

“For five years, though?”

Dan sighed, and yawned again before he could think about it. “Louise kind of helped me get a career in ghostwriting.”

“Oh, that’s cool.”

Dan glanced sideways at him. “You knew that already, though.”

“How could I have known that? You and I both went off the grid, and apparently we’ve both been working under names that aren’t ours.”

“Well, PJ knew, so I just assumed you told him.”

“PJ knew? Have you talked to him lately?”

“N-no, he just left me a voicemail yesterday. For the first time in a while. I didn’t answer.”

Phil rolled his eyes. “Of course you didn’t. But no, I had no idea, so that leaves Louise. Though I didn’t know they were still talking.”

Dan smirked. “Yeah, I didn’t either, which is pretty self-absorbed of both of us, because why wouldn’t they be? _They_ didn’t have a falling out.”

Phil grinned. “So, ghostwriting, you enjoy that?”

“I guess. I mean it’s never something I ever saw myself doing, but it’s basically writing my opinions on movies and music with no consequences, so it’s a good gig.”

“Yeah, and I bet you don’t have a lot of living expenses anymore, either,” Phil said.

“Nope.”

Phil hesitated, then said, “I’m glad you’re still talking to Louise.”

“Why?”

“I just am,” Phil said.

“Well talking is sort of an understatement. She’s my agent.”

Phil laughed. “So I have a pseudonym for video editing and you have an agent for ghostwriting?”

“Well yeah, what if someone’s daughter sees the name their father hired?”

Phil snickered. “We’re both so paranoid, you see that, right?”

Dan snickered, too, and looked over at Phil with a warmth he hadn’t felt towards him in a very long time. He’d missed this. He’d missed it so, so much, and even though he always knew he missed it, that was nothing compared to the pain and reality of actually seeing him again. He loved Louise to pieces, and he knew she was the only reason he was still standing here today, a decently functioning human. But Phil had given everything meaning, had chased away all the emptiness, had helped him when he couldn’t—

“Like finally,” Phil said, as the car pulled up outside the familiar line of apartments. He jumped out and began powerwalking in the direction of the warehouse.

“Maybe wait until the driver is gone!” Dan called after him.

Phil slowed down and waited for Dan to catch up. “This is weird,” he whispered. “I haven’t been back since they cleaned it out.”

“I know, we’re really only assuming that the machine is still there.”

“They said it would be.”

They didn’t say anything else in the remaining two minutes that it took to reach their warehouse. It didn’t look very much older in the five years it had been abandoned, but it did certainly look abandoned. Phil reverently placed his hand on the door.

“We’re waiting,” Dan said. “Where’s the key that apparently is kept so secure with all your other keys?”

Phil pulled his keys out, and Dan could instantly tell that the warehouse one was there. It was completely black, with one purple stripe running down the middle. Adam had designed it, and there’d only been one, and not even Charlie was really sure where that design had come from.

Phil fitted the key into the lock and turned it, and together they pushed until it gave way and sliced forwards into the darkness beyond.


	5. Ghosts of Future Past

**Dan and Phil stood outside the van, staring at it as if they could just will the damage away. Phil cringed as an empty can slid off the tilted shelf above it and fell through the smashed windshield, taking more pieces of glass with it.**

**Rachel hopped out and said, “Well, the only thing that seems to be damaged on the inside is the lever.”**

**“Great,” Dan said. “Great. If only that wasn’t like the most crucial part.”**

**Rachel giggled. “Dan, if something did have to break, a lever and a windshield is not the end of the world. The machine will still function.”**

**“You’ve been working in that lab for three weeks, how could you possibly know that already?”**

**Rachel shook her head. “This is why you should have let me drive.”**

**“He would have been fine if he’d remembered to check the surroundings,” Phil said.**

**“Hey, this is my first trip without Charlie, and we’re alive, and apparently the machine still works, so leave me alone! And Rachel, you’re eleven, there’s no way you were going to drive even if—”**

**He was cut off by the sound of the warehouse door opening. Because it was still their warehouse, even if it was several hundred years in the future. It had been heavily remodeled, probably more than once, and now had a glass balcony bordering a second story, and several staircases leading up to it. But it still looked to be mainly a storage room.**

**A teenaged boy came through the door, walking purposefully towards them, with a middle-aged couple following him. Phil instinctively shrank closer to Dan, and Rachel leaned against the side of the van and crossed her arms.**

**“What do you think you’re doing?” the boy demanded. His glare briefly wavered as he looked at them. “What…who…what are you wearing?”**

**“Funny, we were thinking the same thing about you,” Rachel said.**

**“Rachel!” Phil said, even though his first instinct was to laugh.**

**“Yeah, we’re sorry about the whole…crash-landing in your warehouse,” Dan said. “First time driving a time machine, you know?”**

**“That’s a time machine?” the boy asked, his eyes darting to the van. He slowly stepped forward and touched it, the way Rachel had first done, but in this case Rachel was glaring at him.**

**“A time machine?” The man asked. “Those are pretty rare still. How far back did you have to come?”**

**“Back?” Phil asked. “Nope, we actually went several hundred years forward. You’re telling me you don’t all have your own private time machines yet?”**

**“No,” The boy said bitterly, stroking the machine even though Rachel’s eyes were still drilling into him. “I was four years old when they announced they’d made the first one, and they said in ten years they’d be a household item. But I’m seventeen now and they’re saying it may never be user-friendly enough for the public to have access to it.” He looked up and narrowed his eyes. “So how do you have one from several hundred years in the past, when they hadn’t been invented yet?”**

**“Honestly, I ask myself the same question,” Phil said. “But our friend invented one, so here we are. We’ll probably crash it again though, and that’s why it never became a commercially produced item.”**

**“I’m sorry, okay?” Dan said. “Again, first time driving it. And this one isn’t that user-friendly, either.”**

**“Don’t worry about it,” the woman said. “Most of the stuff in here is junk anyway. But if there’s anything you see that can help fix your machine, you’re welcome to use it.”**

**“Good to know Londoners are still polite in the future,” Phil smiled. “Um, I’m Phil, and this is Dan, and Rachel.”**

**The woman laughed and held her hand out. “It’s great to meet you. Seriously, it’s super exciting to meet time travelers. I’m Zoe, this is Dean, and the kid who is mesmerized by your machine is our son Tom.”**

**“How much do you want for it?” Tom asked suddenly.**

**Phil blinked. “For the machine?”**

**“Not for sale,” Rachel said smoothly.**

**“Yeah, sorry, but it’s kind of our ticket out of here,” Dan smiled.**

**“Well I could go back with you and then bring it here.”**

**“That would be difficult, seeing as how we have to be on board in order for anyone to fly it,” Phil said. “Sorry. I know what it’s like to want what science hasn’t figured out how to give you.”**

**“Yeah, he’s still upset about our lack of flying cars,” Dan said. “Do you have those yet?”**

**“Yes,” Dean answered.**

**“Well there you go,” Phil said. “Your time is definitely better than ours.”**

**“But…” Tom started, and then seemed to change his mind as he shut his mouth and frowned in Rachel’s direction before heading towards the door.**

**“Nope,” his mother said, reaching out and grabbing his arm. “I know you don’t want to, but you’re going to help them fix their machine.”**

**Tom groaned. “Fine,” he said. “The 3D printer is over there, and the Fixadet is over there, but you’ll need to boot up the computer to use him…”**

**“Woah,” Phil said. “Fixadet? What’s a Fixadet?”**

**“What’s a 3D printer?” Rachel asked.**

**Tom pressed his lips so tightly together that they started turning white. “And yet you have a time machine,” he muttered under his breath, which Phil caught as he passed by. “The Fixadet is a robot. You guys know what a robot is, right?” he asked. “He’s like an automated toolbox, so you just have to input commands and he’ll do them. And the 3D printer basically prints out…stuff.”**

**“Rachel, I’m pretty sure Charlie’s got a 3D printer in the lab,” Dan said.**

**“Really?” Rachel asked. “Why hasn’t he used it before? That seems incredibly useful.”**

**“Tom, just show them, please,” Dean said. “You can’t expect them to know how to use everything we have.”**

**Tom wandered over to the computer, but then tilted his head at it. “Well look at that,” he said. “You guys broke it. You know, when you crashed into our stuff?”**

**“Don’t be so dramatic,” Zoe sighed. She walked over to the computer and bent over it, pressing some buttons.**

**“Sorry,” Phil whispered.**

**She waved her hand. “No, it was a really old model anyway. There’s an option to just bring the screen up without needing the actual machine, but it’s going to take a couple hours to transfer everything over.” She stood up and looked at them. “You hungry? It’s probably close to dinner time, isn’t it?”**

**Phil looked over at Dan anxiously. He knew neither one of them was ever too thrilled to engage in a social situation, but he knew Dan was probably dreading it more than he was. But Dan didn’t let that show; he just gave as big a smile as he could force, and said, “Well, I’ve never had futuristic food before!”**

**Phil leaned over to Dan as they began walking back towards the house. “I can’t tell if this is suspicious or not,” he whispered.**

**“I know, but families are usually safe, right? I mean as a whole? Besides…woah.”**

**Phil looked up as they left the warehouse, and had to stop walking for a second as he took it all in. The fact that the warehouse was still around made Phil think everything else would have still been there, too, but the alleyway, the brick wall, and even the apartment buildings were all gone. There was now a completely suburban street, with perfectly manicured lawns and brightly colored houses. He could only see four from where he was, because everyone’s yards were so big. He could see some kind of pavement, but no actual street, and no cars. The sun was still brightly shining, even though it was evening, but the sky was a very pale pinky blue. And there were trees everywhere.**

**The inside of the house didn’t look too different than what they were used to, however, though there were definitely more machines and screens around. But the food wasn’t too different either, which Dan and Phil were both secretly glad about. Before they sat down Dan pulled Phil aside and suggested that they not ask what happened, because they might not like the answer. Phil reluctantly agreed, but they hadn’t counted on the fact that Rachel would ask that question.**

**There had been a war, apparently, and mostly everything in London had been destroyed, including a lot of its inhabitants. But it was then seen as an opportunity to just start from scratch and basically make a new country, so London wasn’t even really a part of England anymore, and instead was its own little Utopian Promised Land that was still surrounded by miles of wasteland if you looked past the city limits.**

**Rachel didn’t ask when the war had been, though, which Dan and Phil were extremely grateful for. They were also grateful that Rachel was more of a social butterfly than they were. Zoe seemed to fall in love with Rachel’s precocious way of speaking, and hung onto every word she said, which Dan and Phil apologized to her for when the family had left the room.**

**But Rachel just looked at them with a glowing smile. “You feel sorry for me? You guys, the only women I’ve had in my life in a long time were the ones when I was a slave, and let me tell you, none of them were very maternal. I’ve never had this before, and I kind of love it.”**

**After dinner Rachel asked to see the house, and Dean and Zoe seemed thrilled to show it off. Tom seemed less so, and wandered off on his own before they’d even finished with the first floor. Dan and Phil showed a polite interest, though it was mostly the same robots and screens and brightly colored decorating in every room.**

**The front balcony on the second floor was a nice change, because while it was so small it could only fit a bench and a little fountain, it overlooked the town for miles, which Phil thought was very cool.**

**“Hey,” Rachel said. “There’s Tom. He’s heading to the warehouse.”**

**“Oh, yeah, the computer probably finished downloading,” Zoe said. “I’m surprised he’s taking the initiative to go and fix your machine, though.”**

**“Ooh, I want to watch,” Rachel said, and she ran back inside. The four of them watched until they could see her running towards the warehouse as well.**

**“So, who is she to you?” Dean asked. “She’s such a bright kid.”**

**“She’s…my…um…” Dan said.**

**“Daughter,” Phil said, at exactly the same time Dan decided to say “niece.”**

**“Well, his daughter, my niece,” Dan said, smiling. He quickly turned to face the warehouse again. “This is such an amazing view.”**

**“I’ve always thought so too,” Zoe said, and Phil was beyond grateful that she just decided to accept their blatant lie.  “You can stay up here if you like until your machine is ready. It shouldn’t be more than a few minutes.”**

**“Thanks,” Dan said, smiling at them as they went back inside. He then turned to Phil and said, “Really?”**

**“I know, I know, I shouldn’t have helped,” Phil sighed. “This is just all super awkward.”**

**Dan laughed and sat down on the bench. “What’s awkward is that I left my phone in the warehouse, like the past warehouse, and now I don’t know what to do with my hands.”**

**Phil giggled as well and sat down with him. “You were the one who said the view was amazing. You’re supposed to just enjoy it.”**

**“I am. Of course we know there was a lot here that had to have been destroyed,” Dan said. “Like, a lot a lot.”**

**“Yeah,” Phil said in a hushed voice. “I’m trying not to work out the timeline in my head.”**

**“I think we’re probably fine. I mean yeah, the war could happen next year and this is what it will still look like in several hundred years, but I think more likely it only took fifty years to look like this. Interesting that the warehouse survived, though.”**

**“Yeah.”**

**Dan didn’t say anything else, so Phil just looked up at the sky and watched the sun slowly dip behind the trees. Even if the sky was an unnatural color now, the stars could be seen more clearly here than they could at home in their city. Phil lazily brushed the ground with just the tip of his shoe and listened to the buzzing of some insect that was nearby, but not close enough to bother him. Eventually he glanced over at Dan again, who had put his hand behind his head and closed his eyes. Which couldn’t have been at all comfortable, but Phil knew they had to take what they could get.**

**“You doing okay?” Phil whispered.**

**“Mm,” Dan murmured. “Yeah. I think tonight’s my 108 minutes though.”**

**“Oh.” Phil looked back out towards the warehouse. “Well I don’t love the idea of staying here tonight, though I’m pretty sure they’d be fine with it if we had to.”**

**“Oh, I don’t love that idea at all. Anyway, weren’t you the one who thought this whole thing was suspicious?”**

**Phil laughed. “Obviously. Maybe they’re just waiting for us to fall asleep so they can stab us.”**

**“I seriously doubt Rachel would let that happen.”**

**Phil laughed even harder. “That’s not even a joke. That’s just a true statement.”**

**“I know.”**

**Phil smiled and looked over at Dan. Dan had opened his eyes and was now gazing out towards the warehouse, when he suddenly sat up. “Hey,” he said. “They’re coming back.”**

**Zoe made a very big deal over saying goodbye to Rachel. Rachel just giggled and let it happen, while the others stood around and smiled, until Tom pulled Dan and Phil aside. “That girl is a bloody psychopath, you know that?” He asked with wide eyes.**

**“Wha—” Dan started to ask, but was interrupted by Zoe and Dean saying goodbye to them.**

**Rachel then held her hand out to Tom with a smile. Tom just stared at it until his father said, “She’s not going to bite, you know.”**

**“You don’t know that,” Tom muttered, but he very gingerly took her hand and then darted back.**

**Phil was very interested to know what Rachel had done to scare him so much, but Dan was clearly ready to leave, and was practically shoving both of them towards the warehouse. Once inside the machine he pulled the lever so quickly that his passengers barely had time to sit down. But when the smoke had cleared Phil saw that they were out of the warehouse they’d just been in, but still weren’t in theirs.**

**Dan turned around to stare at Rachel. “What did you do to that kid?” he asked.**

**Rachel raised her eyebrows. “Really,” she said. “You put Phil through an extra trip of motion sickness just to ask me that?”**

**Dan’s eyes widened and he whipped around towards Phil. “Oh my—Phil, I’m so sorry, I didn’t think…”**

**“No, it’s fine,” Phil said, desperately willing his stomach to actually be fine. “I want to know the answer to that, too.”**

**“What makes you think I did anything?” Rachel asked.**

**“Because he called you a psychopath, that’s why,” Dan said.**

**“What’s a psychopath?”**

**“It means you’re insane, in kind of a violent way.”**

**“Oh,” Rachel said. “Well, I didn’t do anything to him. He wanted the machine, and he was planning to bypass the piloting system so he could steal it. I just convinced him not to.”**

**“You convinced him,” Dan repeated.**

**“Yep. I guess he wasn’t too concerned about anyone trying to stop him. That is, until he tried to stop me. It didn’t go very well for him.”**

**“What on earth did you say to him?” Dan asked.**

**She smiled demurely. “I said enough.”**

**Dan and Phil just stared at her, and eventually she began to fidget. “Did I…was that wrong? I was defending you, and defending the machine, and…”**

**“No.” Dan reached out to hug her as best as he could with the seat dividing them. “No, and Phil and I were literally just saying that we trust you to never let something happen to us.”**

**Her face lit up. “Really?”**

**“Yeah, turns out it really wasn’t a joke,” Phil said, laughing nervously. “But I still don’t know whether I should be afraid of you or not.”**

**She broke away and looked at them. “Do you think I’m a…a psychopath?”**

**“I don’t know,” Phil replied. “We don’t know you that well, but we…we’ve definitely known you longer than he did, and…”**

**“And we trust you.” Dan smiled at her. “We do. Just don’t prove us wrong, Rach.”**

**She smiled back at him. “You needn’t be afraid of me. I had to be tough in my past life, is all, but I could never do anything to hurt you two.”**

…

Dan and Phil just stood silently, staring at the emptiness of the warehouse. It was surprisingly eerie to see it this quiet. It had always been so busy before, because there were always several machines or computers running even if the scientists themselves were taking a break. And it had always looked so full, so crowded, but now it was completely empty, with not a trace of it ever having been used.

Except for the solitary white van in the middle of the floor.

Dan found a light switch, which Phil completely expected to not produce any light, but when it did, he glanced up at the stairs, where Rachel’s room had been. Dan glanced up at it too. “Do you think they cleared that out, too?” he asked, voicing Phil’s thoughts.

Phil’s response was to walk towards the stairs, and begin making his way up them, vaguely aware that Dan was following him. He rested his hand on the door handle for a moment, and then took it off. “I don’t want to look,” he whispered, bracing himself for Dan to mock his fear.

But Dan just reached forwards and opened the door without saying a word. He didn’t try to find the light switch for this one, because he didn’t need to. They could see well enough that it had been cleared out as much as the lab downstairs. Phil stood, frozen, staring into the darkness of her old bedroom, as Dan made his way to the former lounge and opened that door as well.

He immediately closed it again. “Is it…” Phil asked.

“Empty,” Dan said shortly, and made his way back down the stairs, this time with Phil following him. “Really though, what were we expecting?”

“I don’t know,” Phil said, even though he knew Dan wasn’t really looking for an answer.

Dan sighed as they walked up to the van. “Welp, I’m completely dreading this bit, and I’m sure you’re not thrilled about it, either.”

“I mean I…I do want to do it. And I think we need to.”

Dan just nodded, and pulled his key out. The interior of the van looked very exactly the same as they remembered it, though Phil knew it had no reason to look any different. It didn’t even really look older. Abandoned and disused, perhaps, but honestly it had looked like that the first day they’d seen it.

Dan put the key in the ignition and turned it, and the van roared to life as all the lights and the screen came on as well. Phil slipped in the passenger seat beside him, and both of them stared at the controls. “You remember how to do this, right?” he asked quietly.

“Of course I do. I don’t think it’s something you could just forget.” But Dan made no motion to do anything, so Phil pressed a button on the screen and asked, “When are we going back to?”

Dan shrugged. “When did you move out of London?” he asked.

“What?”

“Well, we can’t interfere with our timelines, so we should probably try to avoid running into ourselves. So when did you leave London?”

Phil bit his lip. “Immediately.”

Dan was quiet again for a moment, and then said, “All right, let’s go back to the summer of 2020, then.”

“So you weren’t in London then, either?”

Dan’s hand clenched, but only briefly, before he entered the date. “We won’t run into me,” he said.

Phil looked at him, but Dan only stared ahead and drove the van a couple of feet forwards.

 “Why’d you do that?” Phil asked.

“Because the van was in that exact spot four years ago.”

“Oh.” Phil was impressed. “I wouldn’t have thought of that.”

“Well I was going to check the surroundings, and then I remembered what the surroundings would have been.” He again just sat, clenching the wheel, making no movement to do anything else.

“Dan,” Phil said gently.

Dan looked at him. “Are you sure about this?” he asked.

“We already said we have to—”

“I don’t mean what we’re doing,” Dan said. “I mean you. Travelling. Through time.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“But you—”

Phil reached forward and pulled the lever, and the van began to shake. Phil knew it was a mistake as soon as he started seeing the familiar lights and smoke surrounding the windows. But it was a mistake that he knew had to be done, so in that sense he supposed it really wasn’t a mistake. He could only be grateful that the traveling process only took a couple of seconds, because he slid out of his seat and collapsed onto the floor, hugging his knees as close to him as he could.

Dan instantly turned the car off and fled to Phil’s side, but what Phil wasn’t expecting was for Dan to wrap his arms around him, lifting him to his chest and holding him tightly. “Hey,” he said. “Breathe, Phil. You’re okay. You’re okay.”

Phil squeezed his eyes shut and buried his face in Dan’s chest. He honestly hadn’t expected it to be this terrible. The first time he’d ridden in the machine it had just been a feeling of dizziness, and though every time after that the sickness and dizziness increased, he’d thought it was because he was doing it so frequently. He hadn’t expected that he’d be in this much pain after a five-year gap. He’d never actually thrown up after riding in the machine, but his stomach hurt so much and his head whirled around so madly that he almost wished he would, just to be rid of it.

But they’d discovered that if he tried to shut out the lights, and made himself as still as he could, he could endure it. Dan had often been there to assist with that, unless he’d been controlling the machine, as he was today. But even if he hadn’t been, Phil wouldn’t have thought that Dan would want to or feel able to gather him up in his arms like he was doing right now. And Phil couldn’t even relax properly because it felt so strange to be breathing in Dan’s scent again.

But, even if he couldn’t relax, the sound of Dan’s heartbeat right up against his head was enough to take his mind off his pain, and the pain slowly wore away, as it always did. Phil sat up as soon as he noticed, and Dan instantly let his arms drop. “Thanks,” Phil managed to whisper.

“Yep.” Dan stood up and looked out the windows. “Great,” he said. “The lights weren’t on four years ago.”

Phil stood up as well and looked towards the door. “Okay, but we can see daylight coming from over there, so it’s not like we don’t know where to go.”

“True. And I guess it’s not like we’ll trip over anything.” He opened the door and stepped out, and then looked behind the van. “And there’s the other one.”

Phil followed and looked as well. Seeing them both together like that, and knowing they were completely identical was weird. It was so weird it was almost bringing his dizziness back, so he began walking towards the warehouse door as quickly as he could.

“So,” Dan said. “We haven’t…really come up with a game plan here.”

“We’re looking for answers.”

“Yeah, but how are we gonna do that?”

“Well,” Phil said slowly. “I guess we start with what we know. We know Charlie took her to the police. So let’s just go ask what they did with her.”

“That’s probably confidential information, you think they’ll just tell us?”

“Do you have a different idea?”

“Phil, when people ask that it doesn’t make the original plan any better.”

“No, but they go along with it because the alternative is to do nothing. And I did not get motion sickness for nothing.”

“Fine.” Dan sighed. “I guess we’ll just tell them…well, I don’t know what we’ll tell them. But, we don’t even know which station he took her to.”

“My guess would be that one that we always pass on the way here.”

“So, we’ll just walk to it then?”

“I guess. Even though for once, we’re actually in a time period where our credit cards would be valid.”

“Yeah, but I think using them would be interfering with our timelines. Because then there’d be charges that we never remembered making.”

Phil looked at him with wide eyes. “Are you kidding me?”

Dan smirked. “It’s fine, we’ll just have to do it the old fashion way. With cash.”

“I don’t have that much.”

“Well we’ve always had to make do with nothing, so not that much is still helpful. Potentially.”

By the time they’d reached the police station they concluded that the only way they could even try this was if they made something up. Phil was very much against the idea of lying to the police, especially since any attempts by the police to officially figure out who they were would result in severely interfering with their timelines, so they’d have to bolt back to the machine if that happened. “And they’d still know what we looked like, so they’d bring in one of those sketch artists and start looking for us!” he protested.

“Yeah,” Dan said. “I know. So either they swallow our story on the first go, or they tell us they can’t disclose that information and we just politely leave.”

“And then what do we do?”

“Cross that bridge when we come to it,” Dan snapped. “Now shut up, let me do the talking.”

Phil shut up, and watched Dan smile and politely say that they’d just heard of their friend’s death that had occurred the year before, and that he’d been taking care of a girl that he wanted to adopt. Her name was Rachel, but he couldn’t give a last name. The receptionist led them to the desk of one of the officers, which was terrifying, and Phil was confident that they were about to be interrogated.

However, the policeman, for whatever reason, seemed quite happy to try and help them. He pulled out a file on a girl named Rachel who had been dropped off the previous year, badly injured, and had been listed as an amnesia case. Charlie’s name was listed as the one who had dropped her off, but the claim was that he’d only found her lying on the street, and had never seen her before. Tracing her DNA had gotten them nowhere, which was frustrating, and she could tell them nothing about herself or why she’d ended up beaten up, though it wasn’t difficult for the doctors to decide that the beating was why she’d lost her memory. Eventually she’d recovered and been put in the foster system.

“Wonderful,” Dan said. “Where would she have gone?”

“Here, I’ll give you the address,” the policeman said, smiling. “It’s possible she could have been taken in though, and if that’s the case it might be difficult for you to find out where she’s currently living. But I do hope this girl is the one you’re looking for, because we’d love for you to come back and tell us anything you might know about her.”

“Well,” Dan said. “I wouldn’t hold out too much hope for that. This may not even be the same girl. We never met her, and as you said we may not even ever find this one. But thank you.”

“Of course, I’m glad I could help!” The man smiled and walked them out, with Dan and Phil briskly walking as far away as they could.

Phil breathed out a sigh. “That guy must be new,” he said. “There’s no way he should have told us all of that.”

“Yeah, I was surprised by his candor, but I don’t know, maybe that information really is just there for the taking,” Dan said. “Anyway, we got what we came for without raising suspicion, so that’s good.”

“We got what we came for? We still don’t know where she’s living right now.”

“No, but it was still helpful. For one thing, it suggests that her memory really was erased.”

“But she knew who I was.”

“And again I refer you to the fact that she’d remember that first day. And coming here. Just nothing that came after.”

Phil felt his throat start to tighten, and he couldn’t do anything to stop it. “I hate that,” he finally whispered.

“Yeah,” Dan said in a low voice. “I hate that, too.”

 


	6. Memory

**The warehouse, as far as Dan and Phil had known, was just one open-floor that Adam and his scientists had completely filled with all their machines and equipment and desks. But when Rachel had entered the picture, Charlie had shown them that there was another small floor, with a hidden away staircase to access it. It only had two little rooms, but they turned one into a bedroom and one into a kind of lounge, so that Rachel could at least have a little bit of a home that didn’t feel like a laboratory. But she seemed ecstatic about all of it. She claimed that she didn’t even have a corner to herself before, so she would have been happy with anything. She picked up on 2019 culture very effortlessly, and Dan and Phil spent every free day they could with her.**

**But on one such day, Dan had been alone in the lounge when Charlie poked his head in. “Hey,” he said. “I just thought I’d let you know that we’re on lockdown.”**

**Dan looked up from his phone. “We’re what?”**

**“On lockdown. No one comes in, no one goes out.”**

**“Why?”**

**“Because Felix released a chemical that can’t be exposed to the outside air, so, until we can get rid of it the warehouse needs to stay shut up. If Phil was planning on coming here, you’d better tell him now not to bother.”**

**“It’s almost midnight,” Dan said. “Are you saying I have to stay here all night?”**

**Charlie rolled his eyes. “First of all, it’s not like you two haven’t done that before. And second of all, I don’t know how long it will take, but we’ve got the hard job, so stop complaining.”**

**Charlie turned and left, and as soon as he was gone, Rachel walked in. “Hey,” she said.**

**“Hey.” Dan raised his eyebrows. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”**

**“Shouldn’t you?”**

**He looked down at her and smirked. “I don’t have to, I’m older than you.”**

**She stuck her tongue out at him. “Yeah, well you’re not my real father,” she said. “See, I can say things that everyone else says, too.”**

**“Cliché phrases.”**

**“What’s cliché?”**

**“It’s basically what you said. Just in fewer words.”**

**Rachel softly tried out the word a couple of times before sitting down next to him.**

**“Where’d you get that headband?” Dan asked.**

**She giggled. “That’s random. You guys got me a whole wardrobe, you know that right?”**

**“Yeah, but you always wear the headband, so I wondered if it had some significance or anything.”**

**  
“Not really. I made it is all.”**

**“Really? That’s cool.”**

**“Yep.” She drew her knees up to her chest and then apparently decided to change the subject. “Can you not sleep if Phil’s not here?”**

**Dan looked sharply down at her. “Where did…why would you think that?”**

**“He told me you have trouble sleeping sometimes.”**

**“Oh.” Dan would have thought he’d be more embarrassed, but somehow it was kind of nice that she knew. “What did he say, exactly?”**

**Rachel shrugged. “That it’s not really insomnia and is more your brain refusing to cooperate. And that you kind of…crash if you’ve gone enough nights without sleeping. He said you guys call it your 108 minutes.”**

**“Did he tell you what that’s a reference to?”**

**“LOST.” Rachel smiled. “Because you’re like the pocket of electromagnetism that needs to be released every 108 minutes or the island will presumably blow up. He said you guys will definitely make me watch it some day.”**

**Dan laughed. “Yep.”**

**“And he also said he helps you on your bad nights to avoid that crash,” Rachel said. “How does that…work exactly? Like, how does having him around help you when medication didn’t, and just being exhausted doesn’t?”**

**“I don’t know,” Dan sighed. “Because it’s not always the same thing keeping me awake, you know? It’s a mess of reasons, and I don’t know what triggers any of them. And I’ve always had this problem, but it didn’t start to get really bad until I went to University, and he was just…kind of in my life more than anyone else at the time. But I don’t know why he’s able to calm me down. I really don’t.”**

**Rachel nodded. “So what happens if you ever stop living together?”**

**Dan shot her a pained look. “I don’t know that either,” he admitted. “I guess I’d have to return to medication. Which, to its credit did work, but then I had the opposite problem in that I had trouble waking up, and that was even worse.”**

**“Yeah. But at least for now he says you can and will sleep when he’s present, and it’s not like it’s holding you back, so that’s good.”**

**“Wow, he told you everything, didn’t he?”**

**“Sorry,” Rachel whispered. “I just was interested because…you’ve got your demons keeping you awake, and I do, too. Sometimes.”**

**She said it flippantly, but her face was very serious, and Dan suddenly began watching her intently. “What kind of demons?” he asked carefully.**

**She shrugged. “My life wasn’t great. You know. Before. Sometimes I just….” She stopped and looked down at her hands.**

**Dan waited a very long time before he gently nudged her. “Sometimes what?”**

**“I was going to say that sometimes I’m scared I’ll wake up and I’ll be back where I was,” she said softly. “I don’t think that this is a dream or anything stupid like that, because honestly, how can you not tell whether you’re awake or not?”**

**Dan smiled.**

**“But I do wonder sometimes how I got so lucky, and if something this amazing was just dropped into my lap, then it can just as easily be taken away, you know?”**

**Dan vaguely noticed his eyes start to sting, but he blinked them away and pulled her towards his chest. “I’m not going to let that happen,” he murmured into her hair. “Phil and I would never let that happen, you know that, right?”**

**She didn’t answer, and he tilted his head and lifted her chin with his finger. “Rachel.”**

**“I know it, I just…am scared to let myself believe it,” she said slowly. “Sometimes.”**

**“You?” He smiled. “Scared? That doesn’t sound like something you’re capable of.”**

**She laughed. “I know. Another reason why I hate sleeping so much. That’s the only time I can’t keep the fear out of my head.”**

**“Yeah,” he sighed. “I get that.”**

**“I just…” She hesitated. “When my family sold me…”**

**Dan’s heart twisted at those words.**

**“That all happened so fast,” she said. “And now again my life changed so suddenly that I’m afraid of letting myself get comfortable in it because I know it might change again.”**

**“Well, change can be good, you know.”**

**“But I like this. I like living here.”**

**“Do you?” Dan asked. “Even though you’re in a warehouse and your only companions are a bunch of scientists and a couple of nerds?”**

**She laughed softly. “You guys are my family now, so yeah, I’m happy being wherever you are. Besides, turns out I’m pretty nerdy, too.”**

**Dan grinned. “I know. You’ve taken to every interest Phil and I have shoved down your throat.”**

**She smiled, and looked down at her hands again.**

**“Hey,” Dan nudged her. “You’re safe here, Rachel, okay? Phil and I have absolutely no intention of letting you go, and if something is going to change in your life, you will have a say in it.”**

**“Thanks,” she whispered. “That’s…I mean that was probably obvious, but it’s nice to hear, too.”**

**“Good.” Dan kissed the top of her head. “Now, I’m willing to try and go to bed if you are.”**

**She giggled. “I’ll probably have better luck than you,” she said. “But okay. Goodnight, Dan.”**

**Dan knew he was able to fall asleep in random places, so he thought he’d be fine on one of the lounge sofas. Several of them were set up to be beds, as he and Phil knew there’d be nights they needed to stay over, and Dan was just hoping his body wouldn’t realize what he was doing, and he could get through the next several hours or however long this lockdown would take without being sabotaged.**

**But his hopes were dashed as soon as his head hit the pillow. The lights turned on inside his brain, the music started up, and the thoughts started yelling their opinions, climbing all over each other in order to be heard, and they all succeeded. Dan buried his face in his pillow and wondered if he’d be heard if he screamed into it. No no no, why couldn’t they just leave him alone, why couldn’t he just be allowed to sleep in peace? He was pretty sure this would be diagnosed as insomnia, but he knew that wasn’t what it was. It was just full on fear and anxiety, that took the form of an angry raving mob inside his brain. He tried to turn it off, he spent every waking second trying to find the off switch, tried to breathe, tried to think of something else, tried to just relax and not toss and turn, but it was so noisy and confusing and scary that he couldn’t do anything other than curl up as tightly as he could and try to hold back the tears that forced themselves out of his eyes.**

**He didn’t hear the door open. Or, maybe he did, but with all the other noise going on it was very difficult to register or care. But he did feel the bed dip beside him, and he did hear a soft “hey,” as he felt a hand on his shoulder.**

**Dan gasped, instantly pushed himself up, and flung himself into Phil’s arms. He gripped the front of Phil’s shirt with both fists, aware that he was probably stretching the fabric out but not being able to care. He pressed his face into Phil’s chest and closed his eyes, letting himself lean on the one person who knew where to find his off switch. Dan felt Phil’s arms tighten around him, and he focused on finding comfort in breathing in Phil’s scent, and his safe and comfortable and calming presence. He could literally feel the thoughts slipping away as they were replaced by the sound of Phil’s heartbeat.**

**“How’d you get in?” Dan murmured.**

**“Yeah, turns out you guys were on lockdown, and you failed to inform me,” Phil said. “But fortunately Charlie was ready to open the doors around the time I got here, anyway.”**

**Dan twisted himself around so that Phil was holding him from behind, and he could look up and see Phil’s face. He dreamily lifted a finger to trace over Phil’s cheekbones. “Did you check on Rachel?” he whispered.**

**“Yeah. She’s asleep.”**

**“She needs a mother figure,” Dan said.**

**“That’s what’s on your mind right now?”**

**Dan gave no response other than to close his eyes and feel the last of his plaguing thoughts die out as he fell asleep.**

…

Dan and Phil stood in front of the house and looked up at it. “It looks like an orphanage,” Phil said in disgust. “Like one of those old-timey ones where the owner is evil and the children are abused.”

“Well it essentially is an orphanage,” Dan replied. “But I don’t think they’re allowed to be cruel to children anymore.” He looked sideways at Phil, who was still shooting it looks full of hatred. “Phil. We should be glad she ended up here. She would have been safe, you know.”

“Define safe,” Phil muttered.

“Come on,” Dan said. “We’ll just go in, see if they’ll tell us anything about her, and then get out. We only have to be here a couple of minutes.”

“But Dan, what if she’s here? Right now?”

Dan had been about to open the door, but now he stopped. “That…would be bad,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Because if she sees us…”

“Yeah.”

Dan hesitated, drumming his fingers wildly on the door handle. “Well,” he said. “I really don’t see what else we can do. The only alternative is to go back home.”

Phil nodded slowly. “I guess we’ll just have to be super careful, then.”

“Yeah, just be looking around you constantly. Hopefully we’ll spot her before she sees us.”

Phil nodded, and followed Dan into the building, where Dan again put on his most extroverted smile for the woman at the front desk as he tried to ignore the other children milling about and staring at them.  But while she could confirm that Rachel had indeed been there, and had been taken in by a couple after only a few weeks, she couldn’t disclose the address.

“Is there any way for us to find her, then?” Dan asked.

The woman shrugged. “The best thing I can do is reach out to her foster parents, letting them know who you are and that you’d like to see her. They and Rachel will then decide whether they want to meet you at a safe location. Which would most likely be here.”

Dan nodded. “And that’s it? That’s the only way we could contact her?”

“I’m afraid so. Anything else would be a violation of their privacy and safety.”

“Okay.” Dan turned away.

“Would you like me to contact them?” the woman asked.

“No, thank you,” Dan said, wondering what else he could add on to that so he wouldn’t sound suspicious. “I’m…sure her foster parents will have our contact information somewhere, so they’ll be in touch at some point.”

“All right,” the woman said. “You two have a nice day.”

Dan turned around and tried to sigh without being heard. “Well,” he said. “Maybe the machine has a way to track her or something.”

“If it does, I wouldn’t even know where to begin looking for it,” Phil said.

“Me neither, but if we don’t—”

“Hey!” came a soft voice from behind them. They both turned to see a girl walk briskly up to them. She had very dark skin, and she didn’t look many years older than Rachel would have been, though she was quite a bit taller.

“I’m Colleen,” she said.

“Okay?” Phil said. “Hi?”

“I heard you asking about Rachel.”

“Oh,” Phil said, shooting Dan a panicked look. “I mean, we’re looking for someone with that name, yeah, but I’m sure there are lots of Rachels. Here and everywhere else in London.”

“Probably, yeah,” Colleen said. “But the Rachel that arrived here about a year ago was kind of a big deal. She walked around like she was a princess or something, and she never cried, and if anyone tried to pick on her she just kind of looked at them and they backed down. She was our hero. But she was only here for a few weeks. That’s the Rachel you’re looking for, right?”

“I…I mean I still don’t know, based on just that…” Dan sputtered, returning Phil’s panicked look.

“Well,” Colleen went on, “She didn’t say much about her past, even though the workers here are always trying to get the new kids to talk about where they came from.”

“Seriously?” Dan asked. “They want you to just expose all your traumas?”

“Yep, and she didn’t like that, I guess, because she never talked. But one day they all stopped asking and just looked sad whenever they looked at her, so I guess they found out whatever they wanted to know. But she did say one thing, sometimes. Just to the kids that were nice to her, not any of the grown-ups. She said there were two people out there who were going to find her.”

Phil gave kind of a strangled noise in his throat and turned away, coughing into his fist. Dan felt as if a million daggers had pierced his heart, but he willed the tears that were prickling in the back of his eyes to stay down. “She did?” he asked in a whisper.

“Yep.” Colleen nodded. “Nothing else. Not their names, not when they were coming, not even how she knew they’d find her. She didn’t even brag about them, like most people would who have people out there coming back for them. She only said it when pressed. Anyway, a couple came and took her a few weeks later, and so everyone assumed that she was right, and her two people had come for her. I was in the same bedroom with her though, and I thought she looked a little confused when she went off with them. I always wondered if they were actually the people she’d been expecting. But they weren’t, were they? It was you guys, wasn’t it?”

Dan spent several seconds swallowing until he thought he could speak without his voice breaking. “Do you know where she went?”

The girl slowly nodded and pulled out her phone. She scrolled through it for a second before holding up a photo of a written address. “I found it in their files,” she said. “I was just curious to see if she ended up living in a palace or something. She didn’t. The people who took her are named Nigel and Karen Wilson, so, just really boring, ordinary names. And the house is nothing special either. I looked it up.”

Dan was already scribbling down the address on the back of the paper that the police had given him. “Thank you,” he said. “Seriously, Colleen, thank you so much.”

“Sure,” she said. “I mean it when I said she was our hero. She meant a lot to us in those couple of weeks. I like thinking I could do something for her.”

“You did.” Dan reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “You did. But you’d better delete that picture, because if anyone knows you showed it to us you’ll get in trouble, and so will we.”

“Okay,” she said. “I hope you find her.”

“Yeah,” Dan said, looking at Phil and tilting his head towards the door. “I do, too.”

 Once outside, Phil let out his breath as if he’d been holding it in, and sank onto a bench, burying his head in his hands. “She was waiting for us,” he said, drawing in a ragged breath. “She was waiting for us, Dan!”

“I know,” Dan sighed, sitting next to him. “Yeah, that about annihilated my heart to hear.”

“You think?” Phil cried.

“But we couldn’t have known, you know that, right?”

“That doesn’t make it any easier for her.”

“I know.” Dan chewed his lip, and then looked at the address in his hand. “Well, we know where she is, now.”

Phil looked up at him. “That’s even riskier than this was. She’ll definitely see us if we show up at her house.”

“Not if we make sure they’re not home.”

“How could we possibly determine that without them seeing us?”

Dan tilted his head, still staring at the address. “This is nowhere near where we are. We can’t walk to it.”

“Well, that solves that problem then, because we’ve got no other way to get there.”

“We have a van,” Dan said slowly.

Phil stared at him before registering what Dan was saying. “No, no way, I still haven’t driven since I was eighteen and I really doubt you have, either. We are not driving our ticket out of here through London traffic.”

“I mean it’s not that far away. Just too far to walk to.”

“No, Dan, I’m serious. No.”

“Then you can stay behind, and I’ll drive it by myself. At least I don’t need you present to do that.”

“That’s an even worse idea,” Phil said, and sighed. “Fine, okay, but you are going to drive it incredibly slowly and follow every single traffic rule that you can think of.”

It actually went pretty well, Dan thought. He was incredibly nervous about driving for the first time in fifteen years, but he was so determined not to let Phil see it that he did much better than he expected. And he found that driving in traffic actually was almost a blessing, because then he was forced to drive slowly and stop every few seconds to collect himself.

When they pulled up outside the house, Dan pressed the scanner to see if there was anybody inside it. And there wasn’t, so Dan calmly stepped out of the van and tried to put the key in his pocket. It wouldn’t fit with the keychain on it though, so even though Phil sniggered, Dan took the keychain off so he could fit the key in his pocket, but he had to keep the keychain in his hand. And then, even though Phil practically tiptoed behind him, Dan had no qualms walking around the house and going in through the back door.

“Dan!” Phil hissed. “We’re breaking so many laws, do you realize that? Lying to the police, stealing confidential information, and now breaking and entering? Also I’m not even sure your driver’s license is still valid.”

“Relax, this isn’t our time.”

“Yes it is! It’s just a time we’ve already lived through!”

“Phil, we’ve come this far, you’re seriously telling me you don’t want to go all the way now?”

Phil jumped at every tiny noise as he followed Dan up the stairs. It was, as Colleen had said, nothing special, but it was clean and nice and vaguely reminded Dan of the house from Up with how quiet and old-fashioned everything looked. He opened up a couple of doors before walking past the room that he was looking for.

And then he just leaned on the doorway and looked in, and Phil came up beside him and looked, too. It was her bedroom, and they could see that without being told. It was all purple and silver, just like she’d asked for in the warehouse. It was a clean bedroom, but they could see several projects scattered about, showing that she was still a science geek. She had a couple of pictures from movies that she’d liked, but the walls were bare otherwise.

There was a stack of papers on her desk underneath a copy of _The Lord of the Rings_ , which Dan noticed even though it looked as if the book was there to hide it. He stepped forward, laying his keychain on her desk, and lifting up the book.

“Dan,” Phil whispered. “You think she won’t notice if you disturb something in here?”

Dan didn’t answer. He was staring at the first paper underneath the book. He took it up and looked at it, and then at the paper underneath it.

Phil’s curiosity was apparently peaked, because he came in as well, still tiptoeing, and looked to see what Dan was holding.

Wikipedia articles. About them, and their YouTube channels, and their books and their tours. Dan handed the book and the articles to Phil while he looked at the next few pages. These were made up of tweets, and forum posts, from their followers, speculating what had happened, and where Dan and Phil were now. Dan hastily shoved these off to Phil as well, but the next few pages were even more startling.

Phil’s eyes widened as he looked at them. “Notes on time traveling,” he said.

“Yeah,” Dan said. “But not theoretical notes. Because, if we’re assuming that she remembers that first day where we showed up in her timeline and then brought her back here, then she knows that we promised to show her all this stuff, and she was stranded only knowing it was possible. But this…” he swept through the next several pages. “This isn’t just her trying to figure it out. This is all stuff that they told her, and that we showed her. Look.” He held up a sketch of the house in the future they’d visited. “And on this page, she bullet-pointed the list of places we took her. And it can’t just be a coincidence that she has pictures of movies she liked, and the books that she liked lying around. Because even if she was to rediscover them, I think she liked these in particular because we were the ones to show them to her. I could be wrong, but…”

“But it just adds to the fact that she remembers.” Phil put all the papers down and rubbed his forehead. “Oh my gosh, she remembers.”

“Yeah,” Dan whispered. “Whether Charlie knows it or not, he didn’t actually succeed in erasing her memory.”


	7. The Next Step

**Dan leaned over Phil’s chair to look at his laptop. “I thought we’d decided against World War II. For obvious reasons.”**

**“Yeah, but we talked about it so much that I kind of want to go there now. But hey, be glad I’m not still looking at the dinosaur times.”**

**“True.” Dan grabbed a chair and swung it next to Phil’s before plopping down in it. “I can’t believe they made five movies showing why dinosaurs and humans don’t mix and you still want to go back and see them.”**

**“It’s because of the _Jurassic Park_ movies that I’m even into dinosaurs!” Phil protested. “It’s really their fault for sparking my interest.”**

**Dan laughed. “I think we should just go back to 1987. I want to see Baby Phil.”**

**“Oh my gosh, if Charlie hadn’t forbidden that I _so_ would be friends with my past self by now.”**

**“Excuse you. You wouldn’t go find past me?”**

**“Dan who? I only know Phil and Phil.”**

**Dan giggled and shoved him. “Rude. But I just remembered that neither of us were in London then, anyway.”**

**“Isn’t that weird to think about?”**

**“It’s something I don’t like thinking about, certainly.”**

**“But seriously, it’s weird that you were always going to be such a big part of my life and I didn’t even meet you until I was 22. Like, what were you doing all that time?”**

**“What was _I_ doing? What were _you_ even doing in the four years before I was born?”**

**Phil giggled. “We could go back and make ourselves meet earlier now, do you realize?”**

**“No we couldn’t. That breaks, like, all of the rules.”**

**“I know,” Phil sighed. “I just want to see what would happen. If our lives would be different now at all.”**

**“Would you want them to be?” Dan asked. “I think they’re pretty good right now.”**

**“Obviously. I just wonder how else they could have ended up.”**

**“Mm,” Dan said. “I don’t. I think we got the good timeline, and if we tried to change it, we could end up with the one where you never asked me to live with you, or we die, or we get invaded by aliens.”**

**“I see you arranged them from bad to worse there. Good to know you’ve got your priorities straight, Hermione, and that an alien invasion would be worse than death.”**

**Rachel suddenly rushed through the door and slammed it behind her. “Hey,” she smiled. “What’cha doing?”**

**“Trying to decide where to take you next,” Dan said. “Any particular reason why you’re bursting into rooms and slamming doors?”**

**“Nope,” she said. “And if we’re deciding where to go, my vote is for a time before mine.”**

**“Dinosaur times!” Phil said triumphantly, and looked at Dan pleadingly.**

**Dan rolled his eyes, but smiled affectionately. “I’ll ask Charlie.”**

**He stood up, but Rachel backed up against the door and spread her arms out. “I…wouldn’t go out there right now.”**

**“Why?” Dan asked, just as a loud hissing and several screeches could be heard. They could hear footsteps pounding up the stairs, and when Charlie threw the door open, and burst of white smoke accompanied him.**

**“Rachel,” he said between coughs. “What on earth did you do?”**

**“I didn’t mean it to go that far,” she said, coughing as well. “Felix had some stuff on his desk that he said would make a white fog, so I put some in the fan and turned it on.”**

**“Yeah, except you turned on the heating setting, which made it react with every air vent in the vicinity,” Charlie sputtered.**

**“Well yeah, I realized that afterwards.”**

**“Why did you even go near it? I told you not to mess with Mr. Jekyll and Hyde down there. He’s got anger management issues, kid, he’s not as big-hearted as me. When I tell you I’ll strangle you that just means you’d better not do it again. He would actually strangle you in a heartbeat.”**

**“Yeah.” Rachel shrugged. “I didn’t think that meant I couldn’t touch his stuff though. I knew what I was doing, kind of, I mean I wouldn’t have touched it if I’d thought it’d be lethal or anything.”**

**“You didn’t know that it wasn’t!”**

**Rachel blinked, and Dan caught a sudden change in her glance. She crossed her arms and lifted her chin. “I did,” she said. “I did know; you have no idea what I know. And anyway it’s done, and the smoke is clearing, and you can’t undo it anyways.”**

**“I…” Charlie seemed at a loss for words, and so just frowned. “I mean it,” he said. “Don’t touch anything on his desk. Ever.”**

**He marched away and Rachel just looked back at Dan and Phil. “I really wouldn’t have done it if I thought I’d be dangerous.”**

**“I know,” Phil sighed. “But, Rach, you do need to listen when he tells you things because…I know you’re incredibly smart and all that, but they do have like a lot of years of studying this stuff under their belts, and you’ve got about three months.”**

**“I know,” she said. “I’m being careful, I promise.”**

**She slowly walked out of the room, and Dan leaned on the doorframe and watched her head to her room and close the door. “She needs a mother figure,” he said.**

**“Yeah, you said that before.”**

**“I did?” Dan tried to think back. “When?”**

**“The night the warehouse went on lockdown. You were mostly asleep though, I think.”**

**“Phil, I thought we agreed to disregard everything I say immediately before falling asleep and immediately after waking up. You know I never remember saying it.”**

**“Yeah, but I was pretty sure you meant that one. And now you’re saying it again, so I was right. But why, are we not parents enough for her?”**

**“We’re not her parents at all.”**

**“Yeah, but she seems to like us anyway.”**

**“She says we’re her family,” Dan swallowed. “But what kind of broken, dysfunctional family is that for her? It’s two guys who rescued her from death who don’t even live there, and four stuffy scientists that aren’t really there for her other than to educate her. And none of them are even girls. If she had at least one woman living here with her it would be different.”**

**“We’re still better than whatever she had before. A family that sold her into slavery followed by a household that treated her like an object? And we can’t be broken, or dysfunctional, when we’re not even actually related. We’re all on good terms with each other, so what’s the problem?”**

**“I don’t know, I just…wish she had stability is all.”**

**“She has stability!”**

**“Okay, I didn’t mean…” Dan ran his hands through his hair. “I think she should get to be a normal kid. She should have normal parents that actually adopt her, and she should live in a proper house and go to an actual school and have friends her age. We couldn’t give her that. Not now, not at this stage in our lives, and we couldn’t even both legally adopt her without being related. Believe me, I checked.”**

**Phil grinned. “Yeah, I really wouldn’t enjoy us fighting to see who gets custody of her,” he said. “But it’s not like we took a normal life away from her, you know. She’s a slave from the past, and she was about to die. And she likes her life now, doesn’t she?”**

**“I suppose, yeah,” Dan sighed. “And I don’t even know what solution I’d be proposing. I was just thinking out loud, I guess.”**

**Phil nodded. “And I approve that,” he said. “Because the last thing I’d want to do is screw her life up.”**

**…**

Dan almost staggered backwards until he was sitting on the bed. “We screwed this up,” he said, closing his eyes. “We _so_ screwed this up.”

“I know,” Phil said. “I know.”

“Like, I don’t even know what to do with this information now that we have it,” Dan said. “It’s not really like we can sit here and wait for her to come back. It’s not really like we can go tell our past selves that she survived. It’s not _really_ like we can do anything other than just return to our present time and let her continue down those five years of pain and confusion!”

“Okay Dan, you may be overdramatizing this just a tiny bit.”

“Really,” Dan said, opening his eyes again. “Well, how does it look to you, then?”

Phil glanced around. “It looks like she’s found people who are taking care of her,” he said softly. “That’s what you wanted for her, anyway. You went on and on about how she needed a mother figure, and now she’s apparently got one.”

“But she’s a kid, Phil, and she’s never going to understand why we just left her in some lonely hospital room with no one caring whether she lived or died. That sort of thing runs deep with someone her age.”

“Yeah, I’m sure it would run deeply with a person of any age,” Phil said.

“We should have just done this the proper way,” Dan said. “We should have just taken her to a foster home the day we brought her back.”

“You think that would have been better? When we promised to let her stay with us and figure out how to time travel?”

“Well we should never have done that either! What were we even thinking?”

“We were thinking that we wanted someone to take our place.”

“And we chose a defenseless little girl,” Dan said bitterly. “We are the monsters in this story.”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Yeah, because she was going to die otherwise?”

“You really want to get back in this debate? We never got anywhere with it the thousands of times we had it before.”

Dan leaned forward, resting his chin on his folded hands. “I just don’t know what we’re supposed to do here.”

“I don’t either,” Phil said. He sighed. “I wish I’d never seen her in that stupid shop.”

“No you don’t,” Dan said. “I’m actually feeling hopeful for the first time in five years, and I know you are too, or you wouldn’t have rushed over to me to tell me that she was alive.” He glanced sideways at Phil. “Assuming that you really did see her.”

“I did see her,” Phil said. “But I didn’t rush, exactly. Took me a couple of hours before I could work up the courage to come, and…I may have stood at the door for an awkwardly long time before I rang the bell.”

“Wow,” Dan said. “But same.”

“And yeah, I get what you mean about feeling hopeful,” Phil said. “But the guilt I’ve been carrying around all this time has just increased ever since I saw her, too.”

“Oh, definitely. There’s just no getting rid of that, whatever the outcome of this ends up being.”

“Well good, I’m glad we agree on that at least,” Phil said, sighing and looking out the window. His eyes suddenly widened and he jumped. “Oh my gosh, I think they’re coming back.”

“What?” Dan jumped up, too, and hastily swept the papers back into what he hoped was a similar order that they had been in. “Phil, she’ll see the van, and she’ll know what it is!”

“I know, I know, I—” Phil broke off, and said, “Oh, nope, they parked in front of a different house.”

“Well thanks for aging me ten years,” Dan said, shoving him out the door. “But we do need to go, because if she sees it…”

“Agreed.” Dan could see him glancing over his shoulder back into the room, and Dan briefly did the same, to see if everything looked as they left it. But Dan was pretty sure one of them would have noticed if it wasn’t, and now he was too paranoid about Rachel seeing their van from the end of the street or something, so he just continued shoving Phil towards the stairs and hoped Rachel wouldn’t notice anything.

Once back in their own time, and safely in the warehouse, Dan leaned heavily on the wheel. “So,” he said. “I guess that was helpful. I guess it’s good we did that. But now we really do need to decide what our next step is.”

“Ugh,” Phil said. “I’m dreading that so much.”

Dan wholeheartedly agreed. Dan didn’t know really what it was they’d been hoping to accomplish by tracking her down in the past and seeing what had happened to her. He agreed it had been a good idea, but now he didn’t know how to begin fixing their mistakes, if they even could be fixed. And he was terrified of making the same mistakes over again.

“I think we need help,” Phil said.

And just like that, it was like a weight had been lifted off of Dan’s shoulders. Bringing someone else in would make everything so much easier, not that he knew who that could be. “That’s probably the smartest idea either of us have had today,” he said. “But I’m not sure who we know who would be qualified. Or willing.”

Phil hesitated. “Louise and PJ?”

Dan just stared at him. “Louise and PJ. Who know nothing of this.”

“I wouldn’t say nothing,” Phil said in a low voice.

Dan slowly nodded. “So I take it you told PJ at some point.”

Phil shifted in his seat. “Yes.”

Dan nodded again and sighed as he reached for his phone. “All right,” he said. “I can’t really say I disagree with you. Those two collectively have more braincells than we ever did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I've...decided to update pretty much every day/other day until this is finished.


	8. The Second Night

**“What kind is that?” Rachel asked, pointing to what must have been the sixth dinosaur in the past five minutes.**

**“I don’t know, Rachel, do I look like Wikipedia?” Dan sighed.**

**“Well, check the scanner,” she said.**

**Phil slid off the back of the van and walked around to the front. He pressed the scanner. “Ooh,” he said. “It’s an Ovilodon. And it hasn’t been discovered yet.”**

**“Scientists in your time really need to step it up,” Rachel said primly.**

**“I know, that’s what I’ve been saying!” Phil said.**

**“Give them a break, guys,” Dan giggled. “I mean, it’s not their fault that we didn’t have to go back nearly as many years as they claimed dinosaurs have been extinct for.”**

**They watched the forest around them for several more minutes while sitting in the back of the van. Phil looked down at Rachel who was swinging her legs and staring ahead with rapt attention. He nudged her. “You hungry?” he asked.**

**“Sure,” she said. “We’re having sushi, right?”**

**“And you are going to love it, or we will disown you right here and now,” Dan said, reaching behind him for the cooler.**

**“Harsh,” she said. She tilted her head and looked at the sushi when it was handed to her. “Well, it doesn’t look revolting, so that’s something.”**

**Dan and Phil giggled. “We won’t actually disown you,” Phil said. “Because what Dan failed to mention is that neither of us liked sushi the first time we had it, either.”**

**“Yeah, really you have to experience it in a proper restaurant,” Dan said. “Preferably in Japan, but, this’ll have to do. Sorry.”**

**Rachel popped it in her mouth and squinted. “Well,” she said. “That was certainly interesting.”**

**Dan laughed. “Good interesting or bad interesting?”**

**She smirked. “I have to try it again to see.”**

**“Good answer,” Phil said, nodding approvingly.**

**“And it doesn’t taste like raw fish, which is a bonus,” she said. “Because I don’t care to repeat _that_ experience.”**

**“What experience?” Phil asked. “Have you…did you have to eat raw fish back when...you know…before?”**

**“Once,” she said. “Well, I actually just tried a bit of it and decided I’d rather go hungry than have anymore.”**

**“How on earth would that even come up?” Dan asked.**

**“My mistress was supposed to have a party, so they ordered all kinds of fish for it,” she replied. “But then the party was cancelled, and since the fish were likely going to go bad before they could all be used, that’s what we were given. Most people suffered through it because they…I think they weren’t sure when the next time they’d be fed was. I wasn’t as concerned about that for…reasons, but it ended up being a mistake because nearly everyone who ate it got sick.”**

**“Shocker,” Dan said.**

**She gave a small laugh. “I know.”**

**“So, what, the household or whatever was just without slaves until everyone got better?” Phil asked.**

**She sat quietly, picking at her shirt hem. “Not exactly,” she said. “They were all…replaced.”**

**“What does that mean?” Phil asked, looking over at Dan, who was frowning. “Dan, what does that mean?”**

**Rachel looked up at Dan who just said quietly, “Replaced? As in…”**

**“As in replaced,” she said, staring at him. “As in killed.”**

**Dan pursed his lips and looked at her so tragically that Phil couldn’t watch him anymore, and just put his arms around Rachel and laid his cheek on her head. “I’m sorry,” he said.**

**“Yeah,” she whispered. “It’s okay, I mean…” she stopped. “It’s okay,” she repeated.**

**“Why, though?” Phil asked. “Wasn’t that like way more expensive than to just wait out the food poisoning?”**

**“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “I didn’t really get it either.”**

**“Sorry to just hand you raw fish again,” Dan said.**

**She smiled, and Phil sat back. “No, I actually liked this. And I didn’t get sick from that time, so it’s not like it’s ruined for me or anything.”**

**“Well,” Phil said. “You can just eat the side dishes. And then we’ve got Haribo.”**

**Her eyes lit up and she lifted her head. “Haribo? Where?”**

**Phil produced a package, and Rachel grabbed it and yanked the lid off. Phil was pretty sure he wouldn’t have stopped any child from digging into the Haribo before eating their other food, but in this case, he definitely didn’t have the heart to, and he was pretty sure Dan wouldn’t, either. They would never get over how traumatic Rachel’s life might have been before meeting them. And they would just never know the whole of it.**

**“Well,” Dan said when they were finished. “Are you two all nerded out yet, or have you not had your fill of dinosaurs?”**

**“You’re just as much a dinosaur nerd as we are, Dan, don’t deny it,” Rachel scoffed.**

**“But no, I’m not recovered from the trip out here yet,” Phil protested. “Let’s not go back yet.”**

**Rachel shot him an anxious look. “Charlie and I are working on that, you know,” she said.**

**“Working on what?” Phil asked.**

**“A motion sickness pill. Not a regular one, obviously, because I guess those are easy to get a hold of, but like a…time sickness pill. I guess. I mean he’s doing most of it, but I told him I wanted to help.”**

**Phil smiled. “Really? Because that…would be incredible.”**

**“I know,” she said, and then looked out. “Okay, we can be done in a minute, but I just saw a baby Ovilodon and I’m going to be the first person to play with one.” And she ran out of the van towards the dinosaur.**

**“You’re the first person to play with any dinosaur!” Phil called after her, laughing and looking at Dan. But Dan was just staring off into space and didn’t look at him.**

**“What?” Phil asked softly, and then nudged him when he got no response. “Hey.”**

**“Mm.” Dan stirred and then stretched his arms before finally looked at him. “I was just thinking again that we…she can’t live in the warehouse forever.”**

**“Why is it you always have that revelation after she announces something super sad about her past? I’m definitely not gonna abandon her _now_.”**

**“Well we wouldn’t just drop her off in the street somewhere, we’d let her live with us until someone wanted to take her in.”**

**“What, like a stray? Why can’t we just keep her then? Like a stray?”**

**“The same reason we can’t have any kind of pet, Phil.”**

**“She’s not a pet.”**

**“No, but she’s a life that our landlord won’t let live in our house, and that we can’t really commit to taking care of properly.”**

**“Well, what if we did commit to taking care of this one?”**

**“We’re too high-profile to just randomly introduce a kid into our lives. Our followers would be asking where she came from, and then the police would, and the most feasible answer we could come up with would still be a lie. So adopting her is out of the question, Phil, it just is, and that means she can’t stay here forever.”**

**Phil was silenced by that for a while, but it wasn’t because he agreed. He still felt sure that they could make it work, somehow. Did their followers really need to know about her? Couldn’t they just change their rent agreement to include her? Would it be so difficult to take her with anytime they had to fly somewhere? He knew that it would be difficult, but anything seemed better than to just hand her off to someone else and let her be their problem. He looked out at her playing with the baby dinosaur, and looking up in their direction and laughing.**

**“I don’t think we should get rid of her,” he finally said, stubbornly.**

**Dan sighed. “And I don’t think we need to continue discussing it right now, because she can still live in the warehouse for the time being. But I do think we need to start seriously considering what we’re going to do with her, Phil. And we need to do it soon.”**

**…**

_Do you think you and Phil will be best friends forever?_

_That’s the plan._

“That’s the plan,” Phil said softly, shoving his hands in his pockets and staring down at the sofa.

“What’s the plan?” Dan asked, walking into the living room.

“What?” Phil asked.

“You have _food_!” was the first thing Louise cried as she walked in behind Dan.

“Good to see you too, Louise,” Phil smiled.

Her response was to turn around and throw her arms around him. “Oh, Phil, you know I love you and missed you, but food is the most important person in my life, you know.”

“That’s what Dan used to say,” Phil replied. “I see he’s been a bad influence on you.”

“No, but he is definitely the worst person in the world to put up with,” Louise said, but she hugged Dan and kissed his cheek anyway.

PJ nodded at Phil and smiled in greeting, but he also grabbed Dan in a bear hug. “It’s so good to see you, Dan!”

“You too,” Dan smiled, but looked pleadingly at Phil for help. Phil just grinned in response and did nothing.

“Okay, are we good? Have we gotten all the pesky greetings out of the way?” Louise asked. “Because I know we’re here to discuss some important stuff, but honestly, I can’t think straight when I’m in the same room as pizza.”

Phil was determined that no one should say anything about what they were there to talk about until they’d finished eating, because pizza was too nice a thing to not just enjoy while talking about something difficult. He had come up with a quick list in his head of things to say if the conversation should start heading in that direction, but fortunately, he never had cause to use it. It seemed that no one else was keen to start talking about it, either, so they actually had a very pleasant time talking and banting and laughing like the old days.

The old days. Phil almost hated himself for having that thought. That made them all sound so old, but really, he guessed they kind of were, now. Well, except for Dan, who would always be the baby of the group even if he did start looking his age, ever.

But it ended way too soon for anyone’s liking, and even though they all cleared everything away, just to prolong the inevitable, it seemed, the moment finally came where they just sat around and said nothing.

Phil was pretty sure it was once again up to him to break the silence, so he did. “I don’t know why we’re all dreading this,” he said. “I think a trip to the dentist, for example, is worse than this.”

“Then you’d be wrong,” Dan said, and Louise quietly snickered.

“I know you both know by now,” Phil said. “And…have for a long time I guess, that Dan and I inherited a time machine, and brought a little girl from the past to sort of raise to take over the time machine, because neither of us really felt comfortable having responsibility of it.”

“And up until yesterday we thought she was dead, but nope, she’s alive, she’s out there, and she’s looking for us,” Dan said smoothly, preventing Phil from having to say anything about their falling out, even though they knew both their friends were painfully aware of it. “Not that this in any way should have to be your problem, but you two are our closest friends, and you also both already know more than anyone else does, so…”

“I get it,” PJ said. “Really, I do.”

“Yeah, I’m super flattered that you’re involving us in the decision of what to do next,” Louise smiled. “To be honest it’s what you should have done a long time ago.”

“Probably, yeah,” Dan sighed.

“So,” Phil said, awkwardly coughing. “I guess…that’s all I have to say, and the floor is now open for debate.”

Another long period of silence, until PJ said, “Okay, I get that…you’re scared of the fact that she’s gonna think you ditched her. That’s the problem here, right? But if I’m being honest, I don’t really know why you can’t just go and find her and tell her you didn’t know.”

“Because she’s unpredictable and she’s got kind of a psychotic streak in her, that’s why,” Dan said.

“Oh,” Louise whispered, as PJ raised his eyebrows.

“Not that we don’t still adore her,” Phil said. “It’s just we don’t really know if she’ll…shoot us on sight or something.”

“Okay but in films you have to, like, show you trust her first in order to get her to trust you, you know?” Louise asked. “If she thinks you’re hiding from her then she’s going to think you’re afraid of her, and that’ll just make her hate you even more.”

“This isn’t a movie,” Dan sighed.

“Movies are based on reality, Mr. Film Critic,” she replied.

“You really think she’d harm you?” PJ asked. “She’s only what, like fifteen?”

“Sixteen,” Dan and Phil instantly replied.

“Okay, sixteen. Don’t suppose you know where she’s been all this time?”

“She’s been living with a foster couple,” Dan said.

“Well that’s good,” Louise said. “You know she hasn’t been vulnerably wandering the streets then.”

“It is good,” Phil said. “It is, really, and so maybe she’s over it, and really she just wants to see us to have closure, or whatever, but…”

“But she was acting out,” Dan said, biting his lip. “A lot, towards the end there. And…we don’t really know where she came from, you know? She’d never talk about her family, all we know is that they sold her into slavery, and then she attacked a guy when she escaped. And she was only eleven then.”

“And don’t forget the kid she traumatized in the future,” Phil said.

“And the weapons she had access to in the warehouse,” Dan said. “Yeah, as much as I’d love to believe she outgrew all of that, she apparently ran away from her foster house in her pursuit of us, so forgive us for being skeptical.”

“Well,” Louise said. “I don’t know, I still think you’re making a mistake by hiding.”

“And I still doubt she’d be a threat to you, when you’re the ones who saved her,” PJ said. “And she must care about you if she still wants to find you.”

“Oh, right,” Louise said. “Like all those vengeful psychopaths in the movies.”

“Louise, we’re not in a movie,” Dan said again.

“But what would she actually do?” PJ said. “If she’s been living a normal life all this time, and only decided now to go after you, then really is she gonna want anything more than just a conversation?”

“But why now?” Louise asked. “Like, what would have prompted her to come searching for you now, instead of the day she thought you left her, or even as soon as she was in her new house?”

“Well she’s got a government weapon apparently, so my guess is she’s been building those,” Dan said dryly.

“She won’t hurt you,” PJ said, shaking his head. “She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.”

“But you don’t know her, PJ, _we_ barely knew her!” Dan said.

“I don’t think you barely knew her,” Louise said. “You can learn a lot about a person in very short periods of time, and you were constantly with her for what, nine months? So yeah you know more about her than we do, but I think she would respect that time with you too much to actually wish harm upon you.”

Dan just began shaking his head. “I don’t know, I don’t _know_ what she’s wanting to do, or how much she blames us, or what she’s thinking, because she was so unpredictable, and it was so long ago, and…”

Phil’s head began to throb, and it felt like alarm bells were going off inside it, warning him of something that was going to happen, something that was going to happen again. Because they weren’t getting anywhere. The debate continued around him, and he did put in a word occasionally, but although everyone was keeping it civil, they still were just spouting their same points of view over and over, in different ways, but not really.

Eventually a silence fell, and it was only broken by Louise standing up and sighing. “Well, I’m about as worn out as a person could be,” she said. “I say we pick this up tomorrow.”

“Agreed,” PJ said. “And I’m inviting us to stay the night, because going home now just to come back in the morning doesn’t make the most sense. So, who wants to fight me for the couch?”

Phil quickly glanced at Dan and saw him tense up at the mention of them staying the night. Phil inwardly sighed as he began to wrestle with himself. He knew Dan didn’t care whether their friends spent the night there or not, because despite his hatred of social settings, Phil knew Dan was completely comfortable with them sticking around if he didn’t have to do anything to entertain them. But he also knew it was completely up to him to decide whether to put Dan through the torture of trying to sleep by himself again or not. But secretly, way down deep inside him, he knew his twinges would never allow him to abandon Dan for a second night. “Louise can have the bedroom,” he said. “And PJ, you can take the sofa bed. Dan and I will be fine out here.”

“You sure?” PJ asked. “Because you’re a guest too, Phil, so really I’m okay if you want the—”

He was cut off by Louise grabbing his arm and pulling him out of the room. “Good night, boys,” she called back, as she shoved PJ in the direction of the office.

Phil looked back at Dan, who had looked up at him and was now giving a confused frown. Phil got up and collected the pillows from the sofa, as well as the fluffy grey blanket that Dan apparently still kept there. He tossed the blanket at him and then sat down again, arranging the pillows around him. Dan continued frowning worriedly at him, blinking occasionally.

“Well, come on then,” Phil said.

“What?” Dan breathed, clutching the blanket.

“You know what, Dan.”

Dan paused. “Really?” he asked suspiciously. “The couch isn’t comfortable to sleep on, especially if you’re not even lying down.”

“Hence all the cushions. And I mean, I can lie down part of the way,” Phil said, sliding down to demonstrate, but making sure to still be sitting up.

Dan just fiddled nervously with the blanket, and Phil sighed. “Dan, even if you can’t tell, I know that tonight is definitely your 108 minutes, so, come on. Take advantage of this while I’m here.”

That seemed to produce the desired effect, because Dan draped the blanket around his shoulders and tentatively laid his head down on Phil’s lap, making sure the blanket covered as much of both of them as it could. Louise had turned the lights off when she left, but Phil looking down could still see Dan bring his fist up to his mouth, as if to cover it, and then he just lay there stiffly.

If Phil was being honest, he wasn’t all that comfortable either, and it wasn’t because he knew he was going to spend the night sleeping in a mostly upright position, which his back and probably neck would likely hate him for. No, that part he was quite willing to endure. But it felt completely odd and out of place to have Dan leaning on him after all this time. And yet at the same time it felt familiar, and Phil knew Dan would never relax if he didn’t first. So he sat as relaxed as he could, and laid his hand gently on Dan’s head.

Dan tensed up even more at the initial touch, but Phil began to delicately stroke his hair anyway. Phil, and probably Dan, too, wondered if this would even help and whether it would be even more difficult for Dan to fall asleep in this now unfamiliar environment. “You don’t have to do this,” Dan said eventually. “Really. Your body is going to hate you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, well.” Phil shrugged. “It’s better than feeling awkward by not doing it.”

Dan snorted, but not as loudly as he’d probably intended. “And this isn’t awkward?”

Phil looked down. “Do you think it is?”

Dan merely hummed in response, and for a second Phil wondered if they actually would have to stop, but was comforted by the feeling of Dan sinking deeper into him as he finally began to let go, and of his breathing turning into actual deep breaths instead of the short shallow ones he’d initially been making.

“You couldn’t do this with Louise?” Phil asked in a hushed voice.

“I never asked,” Dan mumbled.

“Why not?”

Dan didn’t answer, but Phil could tell he had pretty much drifted completely off anyway, so he didn’t really expect one. Which was good, because Phil was already pretty certain he knew the answer.

Phil tilted his head and leaned it into the back of the sofa and he looked down at Dan. There were very few nights he had fallen asleep this quickly, and Phil felt a slight twinge again as he realized this was probably the fastest Dan had fallen asleep in five years. But the twinge was softened by a feeling in his heart that he also hadn’t had for the same amount of time.

And in that moment, he would have done anything not to lose it again.


	9. The Inevitable

**“So Rachel asked me if we could go back to see her friend in 1932,” Phil said, as they were walking towards the warehouse one day.**

**Dan glanced at him. “I don’t…really think we can, you know.”**

**“I know. I’m telling you so you can break that to her.”**

**Dan sighed. “Okay, taking her to other times really isn’t going to work if she keeps making friends in them. And I don’t want to discourage that, because the kid needs friends, but she’s just going to keep getting her heart broken.”**

**“Yeah. Could we get her a dog?”**

**“No, Phil, what we need to do is get her out of the warehouse.”**

**“But we can’t do that. Not really. You and I can’t be seen with her because she’d never be safe in public again if our followers were trying to figure out who she was, and I don’t trust the scientists to take care of her.”**

**“Exactly. She needs an actual family.”**

**“Dan. We are her family.”**

**“Yes, but we’re not enough.”**

**Phil stopped and stared at him. “Yes we are, Dan. We are enough.”**

**“You know what I meant.”**

**“I do, but it sounded harsh,” Phil said, kicking a pebble.**

**“I wasn’t saying anything against you!”**

**“Doesn’t matter,” Phil said, pushing open the warehouse door. “You were saying—woah.”**

**Dan and Phil entered the warehouse and could do nothing other than just stop and stare. Several tables were knocked over, with their contents spilling all over the place, and three of the scientists running around clearly trying to stop any bigger messes from occurring. Standing in the middle was Charlie, shouting at Rachel, who had folded arms and was looking up at him defiantly.**

**“What happened?” Phil asked.**

**“What happened is your little ward here completely went behind my back,” Charlie said in a huff.**

**“I knew what I was doing,” Rachel said crisply.**

**“No, no you clearly didn’t, Rachel, if you had known what you were doing there wouldn’t have been a sonic beam, would there?” Charlie asked.**

**“It was fine, no one got hurt!”**

**“That’s not the point, the point is that I told you not to work on it without me!”**

**“Well, I did, so sue me.”**

**“I’d love nothing better!” Charlie screamed, and then stormed away, calling back to Dan and Phil, “Please discipline her. You’re the only two she listens to anymore.”**

**Dan looked at her. “What did you do?”**

**“I’ve been working on this disk that produces a sonic beam,” Rachel said.**

**“ _We’ve_ been working on it, thank you!” Charlie called from somewhere.**

**Rachel rolled her eyes. “Yeah. I was excited by it even though it’s not a new invention, exactly, but I wanted to do it on my own, and he wouldn’t let me. He said he couldn’t trust me to not get the calculations wrong, because if I did that then I could potentially detonate the place.”**

**“Okay, well I see why he would be concerned about that,” Phil said.**

**“Yeah, but now I can only work on it if he’s there hovering over me, and that was fine when I was just starting out, but I can do these things by myself now! At least some of the basic steps! I don’t need him there for all of it!”**

**“So what happened just now?” Phil asked. “You know, what caused…” he gestured to the wreckage. “That?”**

**She beamed. “I turned it on. And it worked. It emitted a pulse, and it knocked over those tables. And I’m the one who did that. Me, by myself, without Charlie or anyone else.”**

**Felix caught sight of them and stormed over. He marched right up to Dan and pointed a finger in his face. “Get that kid under control,” he said hotly. “Before I have to!”**

**He spun on his heel and marched away again. Dan sighed, reached his arms out to Rachel, and pulled her towards him in a hug. “Why did you have to be so freakishly smart, dear?”**

**“So you’re not mad?” she asked.**

**“When have we ever gotten mad at you?” Phil asked. “We just want you to be responsible is all.”**

**“And listen to Charlie,” Dan said. “Please, Rach. You can ignore Felix all you want, cause we know he’s a mad scientist, and I’m pretty sure Chris and Joe are only here because this’ll look good on their resume, you know, if and when they can ever talk about what they’re doing here. But Charlie’s in charge when we’re not here, you got it?”**

**“You’re not here a lot,” she said, tilting her head and looking at the ground.**

**“Sure we are!” Phil said. “We just…don’t spend as much time in the lab part as you do.”**

**“Well, that’s the same thing.”**

**“You’re right.” Dan smiled. “We don’t participate in much of what you do down here, and we should. We’ll try to do that more, okay?”**

**“Fine,” she sighed. “But that means Charlie doesn’t get to yell at me when you say I can do stuff.”**

**“Rachel, Charlie’s gonna yell regardless,” Phil grinned.**

**She snickered as she turned away. “True.”**

**Phil watched her walk away and then turn to Dan. “Okay, I agree that we need to get her out of the warehouse, because she’s bouncing off the walls here. But if we get rid of her then we’re back to square one, Dan! We find someone to replace her, and then you’ll start having second thoughts about them too, wouldn’t you?”**

**“Yeah, well, maybe no one should replace her. This was our problem, why should we shove it off on somebody else?”**

**“If she’s doing stupid stuff now,” Phil said. “Then that’s on us, and we need to fix it.”**

**“Well maybe we’re not the right people for that, did you ever think of that?”**

**“And again that would be running away from our problems,” Phil said. “You just want to ditch her?”**

**“Of course not, I just think she’d be better off with an actual family!”**

**“Yeah, well they don’t just hand those out, Dan, you put her in the foster system and she might end up staying there until she’s 18 and they have to kick her out because she’s too old to be adopted anymore.”**

**“That’s a long time away yet, Phil, and we’d still be there for her!”**

**“No we wouldn’t, how could that possibly work? We don’t know where we’ll be in seven years, anyway, and maybe she wouldn’t want to be adopted if she thought we’d still be waiting for her once she got out.”**

**“She’d want to get adopted, Phil. Of course she would.”**

**“Well what if some creep adopted her?”**

**“I’m sure they screen people, they wouldn’t let her walk off with someone like that.”**

**“I know, but I mean what if the people who got her are strict or weird or have creepy relations?”**

**“She’s not better off with us, Phil. She’s just not.”**

**“And how do you think she would feel about any of this?” Phil demanded. “How would you approach her with this? What would you say? I can tell you right now that it won’t matter what you say, because she wouldn’t want to leave. She wouldn’t want to leave the security of this to go float around in some foster system with hundreds of strangers. Because the last time that happened to her was when she was a freaking slave!”**

**“Hey,” Charlie barked suddenly, walking up to them. “Not that I would ever ask you two to leave the warehouse, but I think if you’re going to continue this specific argument, you really can’t do it in her range of hearing. Got it?”**

**Dan stared at him while Phil looked over at Rachel. She was bending over a desk and didn’t seem to be listening to them, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t.**

**“Yeah,” Phil said. “Okay.” He turned and left the warehouse, and Dan followed.**

**They didn’t speak on the way home except out of necessity, but if they thought they’d stop arguing once they were back in their apartment, they were wrong.**

**“I just think that time traveling isn’t for us, but it really could be for her,” Phil said. “Because she’s willing, and smart enough, and she keeps making friends in different timelines anyway.”**

**“Yes but she shouldn’t have that forced on her when she’s only eleven.”**

**“Aren’t you the one who is always saying you wished your parents had forced you to do more rather than just leaving you to figure it out on your own?”**

**“Yeah but if you’re keeping a child trapped in a laboratory with scientists as her only companions then that’s worse than leaving them to figure it out on their own. Because that’s forcing them into a life that maybe isn’t meant for them! She should get to choose after seeing what else is out there, she shouldn’t just accept it because it’s all she knows!”**

**“But giving her to someone else would definitely not be what she wanted! And you must know that, or you’d have asked her by now.”**

**“I know she wouldn’t like it, and I know she’d resist, but I think it’d be in her best interest.”**

**“And what about us, Dan? It would kill me to lose that girl. Could you really handle the thought of never seeing her again?”**

**Dan suddenly drew his breath in sharply and looked sadly over at him. “I’d get over it,” he said stiffly.**

**“No you wouldn’t. And neither would I. And neither would she.”**

**Dan shook his head. “I know it’ll be hard. I do. But this situation isn’t good for her, Phil, and I think all three of us need to endure whatever hardships will go along with getting her out of it.”**

**“And yet you don’t want to adopt her.”**

**“Because we can’t. We can’t, you know that, right? I need you to tell me that you know that.”**

**“I don’t see why that would be any harder than getting rid of her.”**

**“Would you stop calling it that?” Dan gasped, tears forming in his eyes. “Yes, of course it would kill me to lose her! Yes, every conversation just talking about it breaks my heart, but, we wouldn’t be getting rid of her, Phil, we’d be giving her up, we’d be trying to get her a better life, and no we don’t know where we’ll be in a year, or five years, or seven years, but what could possibly happen that would render us incapable of just…you know, watching out for her? Making sure she’s safe, wherever she is?”**

**“If we’re doing that then we may as well just keep her.”**

**“We can’t do that, Phil.”**

**Phil pursed his lips and look down. “Well I don’t know what to say to you,” he said quietly. “Because I’m telling you that we can’t give her up, either.”**

…

When Louise woke up the next morning, it took her a startling long time to remember where she was. It really shouldn't have, she thought, as she slowly began to recognize Dan’s bedroom. She’d seen it often enough. Probably more than Dan had, because the only time he was really in it anymore was when he was actually passed out. He avoided his bed like the plague, as if it was a reminder of the basic human function that he couldn’t perform without help. 

“And if you never use it, Daniel, then I really don’t see why you should get a bed as nice as this,” she said to the ceiling. “If you don’t want it, I’ll take it.”

She reluctantly left the comfort of Dan’s duvet, and made her way over to the handbag that she’d left in the corner. Not that it really could be classified as a handbag. She was glad PJ had made the suggestion to stay the night, but she’d have made it if he hadn’t, as she’d come prepared for that, anyway. She knew no one would make a comment on the size of her bag, and she also knew that her three boys would be too dense to realize what it was until it didn’t matter anymore. And now here she was with all the comforts of home, while PJ was probably digging around in the other bathroom for a spare toothbrush.

When Louise emerged from the bedroom she fully intended to go straight to the kitchen, resisting every temptation in the world. But she really wasn’t all that surprised when her legs betrayed her and took her to the lounge instead, where she leaned on the doorway and looked out at them.

Phil had slid most of the way down the sofa, and was now precariously dangling off it, as well. But he’d kept a firm hold of Dan, who was still lying trustingly in his lap, mostly buried under the blanket, fist hiding the lower half of his face.

Louise wondered if she would start crying. Part of her almost wanted to, because she had firmly believed this day would never come, and she knew Dan had needed it so, so much.

She heard footsteps behind her. “Wow,” PJ whispered. “So Dan’s still got that problem, huh?”

Louise nodded without turning her head. “And we still only know of one solution.”

“It’s not a solution,” PJ said quietly.

“I know.”

They both continued to stand there for probably longer than they should have, before Louise snapped out of it. “Well, clearly they’re not going to wake up and make us breakfast any time soon, so I guess we’ll have to do it for them,” she said.

“Is that code for ‘they might actually wake up and see us creeping on them’?” PJ grinned.

“Oh, shut up, just get over here and help me!”

Although Louise knew that every moment Dan was asleep was a precious one, she also made no attempts to stay quiet while she was cooking. When Dan was out he was out, and she knew she’d be waking them up when it was ready anyway, so when it was time she made her way back to the lounge, with PJ following.

Phil was awake, and had mostly sat himself back up, though he still looked as though he could be swallowed up by the cushions. His eyes were cast down, and was slowly running his thumb over Dan’s cheek. He only slightly lifted his eyes as his friends entered the room.

“Good morning!” Louise said cheerfully.

“Hi,” Phil said with a slight smile, before lowering his eyes again.

“We made breakfast,” PJ said. “Louise would like to tell you that it was all her, but really, it wasn’t. She just has never believed that I learned to cook.”

Phil gave a small laugh and looked up at them again. “Thanks,” he said. “You guys didn’t have to do that.”

“Well Louise said there was no use waiting around for you to do it for us,” PJ offered.

Louise glared at him. “You have no sense of tactfulness. And for that you can help me pick up these cushions that Phil threw everywhere.”

“Am I just going to spend the rest of my life helping you then?” PJ complained.

Phil lifted his knees up slightly to jostle the person lying across them. “Hey,” he whispered. “Dan. Dan, it’s time for breakfast.”

Dan gave a kind of moan in protest, but his eyes fluttered open.

“Hey,” Phil smiled. “Good morning.”

Dan didn’t say anything, and though Louise and PJ were trying to look busy with the cushions, both of them were watching him.

“You feel like getting up?” Phil asked gently. “Louise and PJ made…something that has yet to be defined.”

“Wow, Phil, do you not trust us or something?” Louise asked, gasping as dramatically as she could.

“Dan?” Phil asked.

“No,” Dan mumbled.

“No?”

“No, I don’t feel like getting up.”

“Fair enough,” Phil smiled. “Hey, Louise, because you’re literally the best at everything…”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll bring it out here, your royal highnesses,” Louise grinned.

“Oh my gosh, more helping?” PJ whined, but he winked in Dan and Phil’s direction as he followed her.

Dan did sit up when food was actually brought to him, but for a while, instead of eating, he just leaned on Phil’s shoulder and drank his coffee in tiny sips. Phil, however, dug straight into his food, immediately lightening the mood as he teased his friends, and got them laughing most of the way through the meal. Dan still didn’t say anything, but Louise watched the way he kept himself glued to Phil’s shoulder, and then, after smiling at something that had been said, how he leaned forward and began eating while still keeping himself pressed to Phil’s side. Phil seemed not to react to or take any notice of Dan at all, but Louise did not fail to notice how still he kept his right side and arm, so as not to disrupt Dan during the moments he was leaning on him. Louise was fascinated with watching them, and had to remind herself to look away on occasion so they wouldn’t catch her staring.

When the time came to clean up, PJ again made a show of complaining at having to help, but Louise just rolled her eyes and made him do it anyway.

“Well,” PJ said. “That’s a side of Dan I’ve never seen before. I had no idea he gets so…soft when he’s not really awake.”

“I know,” Louise said. “And did you see how Phil just let him sit there like a clingy little child? You’d never know they’d ever stopped acting that way around each other." She probably would have continued gossiping about them and coming up with predictions for their future with PJ, but Phil suddenly walked in and began helping as well, casually mentioning that Dan had gone to change his clothes.

When all four had reconvened in the lounge, it was like Dan was an entirely different person. Again. But this person here was the Dan that they knew and remembered, Louise thought, cynical and independent and using every ounce of his energy to disguise how tired he constantly was.

“So I’ve been thinking,” PJ said. “And I think really you’re scared to confront Rachel because you don’t really know the full story, and you’re not entirely convinced that it what happened to her wasn’t your fault somehow. Am I correct?”

Phil just looked at Dan, who shrugged. “Maybe,” Dan said. “People don’t always know their own feelings, you know.”

“Yeah and we’ve spent the past five years just feeling guilty for her death,” Phil added.

“Good,” PJ said. “So let’s proceed as if I guessed correctly. Maybe there’s something that happened that day that could give you any kind of clue as to why she’s coming now, and what she really wants, and if she’s intending to be malicious.”

“Yeah, well that’d be great if we’d had any cameras filming that day,” Dan said.

“Yeah,” PJ said. “Or, you know, a time machine.”

Louise raised her eyebrows and looked at Dan and Phil, who glared at PJ.

“We can’t cross our own timelines,” Phil said shortly.

“We can’t interfere,” Dan corrected.

“This would be interfering,” Phil said.

“It definitely would,” Dan said.

“Would it?” PJ asked. “You weren’t there, obviously. And you won’t be changing anything. You’ll just be observing, to see what actually happened.”

Phil looked at Dan. “Well, Charlie certainly has proven to be no help, as he’ll probably just lie to us again,” he said.

“Okay, Phil, Charlie was our friend, you know. And I’m just as angry with him as you, but really, this would be the first time we disagreed with him so strongly about something.”

“Sometimes it only takes one time,” Phil muttered.

There was an uncomfortable silence that Louise finally figured out how to break by asking, “Do you two even still have the machine?”

Dan and Phil both just nodded.

“I’m inclined to agree with PJ,” Louise said. “It wouldn’t do any harm to just see, would it? As long as we make sure we aren’t seen?”

“We?” Dan asked, head snapping up.

“I want to have a ride in a time machine!” Louise said. She looked at PJ. “Don’t you?”

“Not to be dramatic, but you two would literally be the worst friends ever if you took our ideas and then didn’t take us back with you,” PJ said primly.

“Well,” Dan said. “This idea is just getting worse by the minute.”

“I don’t know,” Phil said. “I seriously do want to see why she remembers everything. And I would like an untainted view of the truth, one that the scientists won’t be able to cover up.”

Dan crossed his arms over his chest, bit his lip and looked down. No one said anything while they waited for him to reply. When he finally raised his head again, there was a blaze in his brown eyes that seemed to have chased all the exhaustion away. “Fine,” he said. “If we do this, if we go back and we take you too, then we all have to understand that under no circumstances whatsoever will we exit the vehicle, or speak to any person, or do anything that messes with the situation. At all.”

“Obviously,” Phil said.

“That’s what I said anyway,” Louise said.

“Yes, Dan, we’ve all seen _Doctor Who_ ,” PJ replied.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t use that as a reference for this, seeing as how the Doctor was constantly breaking the rules,” Dan said. He sighed and stood up. “Well, I guess if we’re doing this, there’s really no reason not to go and do it right now.”


	10. Falling Out

“All right,” Dan said, cracking his knuckles. “So the plan is that I drive outside the warehouse before we do the whole…you know, time-traveling bit. If anyone happens to be outside, or if anyone comes outside, then we are entirely screwed. The door will most likely be open, though, which is both good for our cause and also very, very bad, so, everyone just be smart about this, okay?”

“I’m trying to listen to you, I really am, but all I can really think about is that I’m inside a time machine right now,” Louise said, bouncing up and down in her seat.

Dan sighed. “Phil. This idea really is the worst.”

“Well I know how much you hate me saying it’s the only-slash-best one we’ve got, so I won’t.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t make it any less true,” Dan said. “Okay, buckle up everyone. It’s a short trip, but I do have to drive for part of it, so I wouldn’t risk it.”

PJ absolutely couldn’t wait for the machine to go back. Phil had told him very few details of the whole thing, and he had no idea what he was about to experience. Would he feel movement? Would they fly? Would they stay where they were and everything would move around them? For a brief moment he worried that it would end up being underwhelming, but then Dan pulled the lever and smoke or fog or something began to form outside the machine, and PJ’s breath was completely taken away. Dan was right, and the trip was very brief, but when it had come to a stop PJ was feeling anything but underwhelmed.

And then Phil gave a moan and began slumping out of his seat. “Help him,” Dan barked shortly, as he began driving the van a little further away from the warehouse door.

PJ and Louise rushed to Phil’s side. “Help him how, what’s wrong with him?” PJ demanded.

“Nothing,” Phil croaked.

“Shut up, Phil. He gets motion sickness when we do this,” Dan responded.

“Are you kidding?” Louise asked. “Why’d you agree to do this, then?”

“It never stopped me before,” Phil whispered.

“Do you have any water? Is there water on this thing?” Louise asked.

“Um,” Dan said. “There might be some things of water in one of the seat pockets back there. Not sure it’ll help, though.”

“Oh my gosh,” Louise said, once she’d found them. “Are you telling me these have been here for five years?”

“Water doesn’t exactly have an expiration date,” PJ offered.

“Thank you, PJ,” Dan said.

Phil took the water, but could only swallow some of it before coughing it back out. “I can assure science that water does indeed have an expiration date,” he said. But then he looked out the window and stood up. “Woah,” he breathed. “That’s…actually super trippy.”

“What is?” Louise asked.

“That,” Dan nodded to the warehouse. The door was indeed open, and though they were now parked behind a dumpster, they could still see inside, and all the scientists bustling about. “It’s like seeing a ghost.”

“That was your lab?” PJ breathed. “That’s so cool!”

“I mean it technically wasn’t ours,” Phil said, but he was beaming proudly. “But yeah.”

“Ugh, I want to go in _so_ badly,” Louise said. “But I’m guessing that’s would count as leaving the machine, huh?”

“There’s also no telling what they’d do when they saw you,” Dan said. “They do have a memory-erasing device, remember.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be too scared of that, it clearly doesn’t work,” Phil said.

Dan gasped and suddenly grabbed Phil’s wrist. “Do you hear that?”

They all sat in silence for a moment, until they could hear a little girl yelling.

“Rachel,” Phil said with widened eyes. “Oh my gosh.”

“I’m going closer,” Dan said, once again moving the van until they were close enough to see and hear her.

“I told you I know what I’m doing!” Rachel was saying. “Why can’t you just trust that I’m smart enough to handle this sort of stuff on my own?”

“I don’t care how smart you are, you’re still a child who needs adult supervision!” an older scientist was saying.

“Who is that?” PJ whispered.

“Shh!” Dan said.

Phil rolled his eyes. “Charlie. He was with us when we found her.”

“Well,” Rachel said crisply. “Dan and Phil clearly don’t think I do. They just let me do whatever I want.”

“They do not, either. They trust me to watch you when they’re not here.”

“Well they clearly trust you to watch me when they _are_ here, too!” Rachel burst out. “They don’t pay attention to me anymore! All they do is yell at each other!”

PJ knew it was entirely wrong to glance at Dan and Phil’s faces when he heard that, but it was too tempting to know their reactions. But when he saw both their faces twist in pain, he instantly regretted looking and turned back to the warehouse.

“Rachel,” Charlie sighed. “I know they’ve been a little distant lately, but I think it’s because they’re afraid they’ll make a mistake with you, you know? They’ve never done this before.”

“Neither have I, it’s not like I’m looking for perfection,” Rachel huffed.

“Charlie,” one of the other scientists said urgently. “Do you see what she’s tampering with?”

“What do you think I’m going to do, Felix, set it off?” Rachel asked. “I’m perfectly aware of what electromagnetism does.”

“I’m just saying that we have nothing but past experience to go on,” he replied.

 “Leave me to deal with this, Felix,” Charlie said coldly.

“Deal with this,” Rachel said. “Like I’m a child?”

“You are a child,” Charlie said.

“Well then be grateful I’m not your child, and leave me alone. They have.”

“I told you, Rachel, just give them time to come around and…”

“No!” Rachel screamed. “I know what this is! I’ve seen this kind of thing before! I know what you do with a child you grow tired of! You sell them into slavery! Is that what they’ve done? Am I just a slave to you now?”

“Rachel, they saved you, and you have no idea what’s going on in their personal lives, so just—”

“I know I don’t know what’s going on in their personal lives, because they never tell me anything! They just pat me on the head and smile at what I show them, and then just go back to keeping secrets from me and biting the other’s head off. They—"

“Rachel!” Charlie cried, eyes wide, as he stared at the gun Rachel was working on.

“Oh this? Does this scare you, Charlie? Do you think I’m actually irresponsible enough that I’d do something—"

Suddenly there was a blast, and as the gun exploded it emitted an orange ray that swept through the warehouse, smashing a lot of the equipment and causing tables to crash. It knocked everyone down, but everyone except for Rachel immediately jumped back to their feet. PJ didn’t even need to look at Dan and Phil this time. He could hear their gasps and staggered breathing, and Louise had given a squeal when the blast had gone off. He himself found that he’d been holding his breath, but he couldn’t let it out now. He was too busy looking at the bloodied body of the little girl lying there.

Charlie ran over to her, and stooped down.

“Is she dead?” Felix asked.

“No,” Charlie said. “But she may not make it.” He stood up and rushed over to one of the tables, and once his back was turned, Felix pulled out a gun.

 “Wait, wait, wait,” Phil said.

“Excuse me, what’s he doing with—” Dan started, but stopped as Charlie turned back around.

“Felix!” he cried warningly. “Felix, she’s not some horse with a broken leg! You can’t just—”

“I’m sorry boss, but I can’t risk her surviving this,” Felix answered, and before Charlie could reach him, he pointed the gun at Rachel and shot her.

Dan screamed. PJ hadn’t been expecting that, but he instantly clamped a hand over Dan’s mouth, and Phil did the same. PJ could hear Louise start crying next to him.

Dan stopped screaming once their hands were over his mouth, but his next reaction was to push Phil off of him, which made PJ pull his hand back as well. “This is exactly why I didn’t want to keep her, Phil!” Dan snapped. “I knew we weren’t good for her!”

“Oh, save it, Dan, you never once suggested that we might get her killed!” Phil shouted back.

“I said she wasn’t better off with us, and I was correct,” Dan said. “Tell me I wasn’t correct!”

“Felix is the one who just shot her; we should have just noticed that problem and eliminated it!”

“Yeah, well we didn’t, did we?” Dan replied. “Because we were too busy pushing her away.”

“Well, that’s your specialty, isn’t it, Dan?” Phil asked coldly. “Pushing people away, and then not caring enough to come after them?”

Dan jerked his head back and blinked. “So now you’re siding with them,” he said. “Why didn’t you just confirm it to them before, when they were all saying that I was the one that kicked you out?”

“I’m just saying that—"

“I cried for _weeks_ when I realized you weren’t coming back, Phil!”

PJ could see that Phil was struggling to come up with a reply, and he took that opportunity to point something out. “Okay, but something’s off, here,” he said. “Because clearly she didn’t die. You saw her, and you know that she’s been living with a foster family, so what’s going on here?’

Dan and Phil turned to him, both breathing heavily, but without saying anything. Louise tilted her head. “You’re right,” she said. “So she must not actually be dead.”

“I didn’t say that,” PJ said. “He clearly shot her. I’m just saying something’s off.”

Another noise distracted anyone from saying anything else, however, and when they turned to see it, they saw two younger versions of Dan and Phil walking down the road, arguing, and everyone had a pretty good guess as to what they were arguing about.

“Oh my gosh,” Louise breathed. “Now _that_ is trippy.”

Charlie lifted his head when he heard them coming, and he ran outside to meet them. “I’m sorry,” he said in a choked voice. “She’s…there was an explosion, and she…didn’t make it, boys.”

“What?” Dan asked.

“I’m not good at the whole sensitivity thing,” Charlie sighed. “Literally anyone would have better bedside manner than me right now, but…Rachel’s dead. I’m so sorry.”

Past Dan and Phil just stared at him in blatant confusion, and Charlie held the time machine key out, with that ridiculous pixel people keychain dangling from it. He dropped it into Dan’s hand. “I think both of you were right,” he said gravely. “This was a mistake, on all accounts, and you shouldn’t have to deal with it, and neither should we. We’re clearing out. We’ll leave the machine, and I’ll post you the warehouse key when we’re gone.” He paused for another second. “I’d tell you to come see her, but there’s…not really anything left…” Dan’s breath caught at this. “Really, I am sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry.” He turned and went back to the warehouse, leaving Dan and Phil standing outside, staring at the key.

Dan just kept turning the key over and over in his hand, until Phil nudged him and softly said, “Hey.”

Dan looked up with tears in his eyes that seemed too angry to fall. “You realize that’s the second time someone’s died on that warehouse floor because of the time machine?”

“Yeah,” Phil said, blinking and turning away. “Yeah, I thought that too.”

“And I felt guilty enough when it happened to Adam,” Dan whispered. “Even though that had nothing to do with us, but this…”

“Wasn’t our fault, either,” Phil said, shaking his head almost violently. “It was not.”

“It must have been,” Dan moaned. “I mean I know stuff like this happens, but…”

“But this seems a little extreme? I agree, I mean what did she ever do? Why did the universe take it out on her?”

“It didn’t,” Dan said bitterly. “It took it out on us. Because we made the wrong decision in keeping her there.”

“Dan,” Phil said firmly, though he was desperately blinking his tears away, “If we hadn’t brought her back she would have died a slave.”

“I know, but then, what, did we bring her back to die anyway? We could have prevented this, Phil, we shouldn’t have tried to force her to work the machine!”

Phil stared at him and opened his mouth, but then closed it and just glared angrily. “Are you seriously using this as an ‘I told you so’ moment?”

Dan gave a short laugh. “You think I’m holding any kind of victory over you right now? Just because it turns out I was correct?”

“I still argue that you weren’t correct, but even if you were, gloating about it is just disgusting!”

“I’m not gloating!” Dan cried. “ _Look_ at me right now, is there any part of me that you think isn’t just as devastated as you?”

“We made her happy, Dan, and thrusting her into a heartless foster system would have been worse for her.”

“Worse than what? Worse than death?”

“She didn’t die because of us, Dan.”

“Yes she did, she was in a room full of chemicals and scientific equipment that she couldn’t understand fully, and if Adam made a stupid mistake that got him killed that how could Rachel have possibly hoped to avoid doing the same?”

“Stupid mistakes are stupid, Dan, it doesn’t matter where you are, you can always make them! It’s like you were _trying_ to find a reason to get rid of her!”

“Phil, I was just as excited as you at the idea of having her live here, and I wanted it to work out, but it just wasn’t, and we should have done something about it before it got out of hand!”

“And how could we have possibly known things were going to get out of hand?”

“Because I was telling you, Phil!” Dan screeched. “And I don’t know why you couldn’t have just listened to me for once!”

“Me listen to you for once? Dan, I _always_ listen to you! I always let you walk over me, and let you have your way, if anything, you should have listened to me for once!”

“And if I had, this outcome would have been exactly the same! Which is why you always give in to me, Phil, because I’m almost always correct.”

“You don’t know that you would have been correct in this case.”

“She’s _dead_ now, Phil, how much more proof do you need?”

“She would have died if we hadn’t brought her back, and she still could have died if we gave her up.”

“You don’t need to keep saying that she’d have died if we left her in the past, because I _know_ that, Phil.”

“You didn’t always. You felt guilty for like a whole month afterwards, wondering if you should have left her there. In the time period, anyway, not in that particular situation.”

“Yeah, until Louise convinced me that bringing her had been in her best interest.”

“Louise?” Phil asked, after a slight pause. “You told Louise?”

Dan shifted. “What if I did?”

“We agreed not to tell anyone about this whole time travel thing, that’s what!”

“Yeah, well, when you stopped being on my side, I needed someone to agree with me!”

“I was never on your side about this.”

“Exactly.”

Phil drew his breath in sharply between his teeth. “Okay,” he said. “So we’re not on the same side anymore. That’s a first.”

“Is it?” Dan said. “Because apparently haven’t been on the same side in almost nine months.”

Phil looked at the ground and nodded. “So what happens now?” he asked, looking back up, straight into Dan’s eyes. “We’re supposed to go back to the flat and just continue our lives, always blaming the other person for her death?”

Dan lifted his chin. “I don’t know, do you have a different suggestion?”

“I don’t think either of us could live with that. So I’ll just move out and spare us both the trouble.”

Dan rolled his eyes. “Oh, that’s real mature, Phil. Playing the moving card? Like either one of us have ever been serious about that.”

“I’m serious now,” Phil said, frowning. “And I know you won’t take me seriously, because you never do and never have. But you just watch, because I’m actually going to do it.”

Something passed over Dan’s face, something that was definitely different than a frown and might have almost been a look of fear, or guilt, or even regret, if PJ was going to have to give it a name. But it quickly passed before Phil could react to it, and the frown returned.

“You do that, then,” Dan said. “Because you’re right, I don’t believe you. I do believe that you’ll take the steps. I believe that you’ll pack up all your stuff, and you’ll take it somewhere, but I don’t for a second believe that you’ll be able to live without me. You’ll be back on my doorstep, one day, and you had just better hope that I’m in a good mood when you do.”

They stood for a second, glaring, but only for a second, until Phil said again, “You just watch.”

He turned and began sauntering off. “What, you think moving out just involves walking away?” Dan called after him.

“I’m going to stay at Martyn’s tonight,” Phil said, not looking back. “I’ll come back for my stuff later.” And he took off running, coming dangerously close to the four in the machine, but not giving it a second glance as he rushed by. Dan stared angrily at him until he’d disappeared, and then he shoved his hands in his pockets and stormed off in the opposite direction.

No one in the van said anything for a very long time. Dan closed his eyes and turned his head away, and Phil just stared at the floor and rubbed it with his shoe. PJ looked at them, and then uttered a very hushed, almost reverent, “Woah.”


	11. Changing the Future

**Dan stared at his laptop screen, sitting completely still except for the one finger that he only barely lifted to scroll through the hundreds of thousands of comments on the last video he or Phil would likely ever upload. Dan had been scrolling through comments every day ever since the video had gone up, and it had taken them longer to figure out something was wrong than he’d expected. But one comment in particular got under his skin, and he didn’t know why, but he knew that this was probably a sign that he should stop.**

**“Not that surprising that Dan was the one to end it, though. Phil would never do such a thing.”**

**That really struck a nerve. And so, against his complete better judgement, he hit reply and typed out “yeah well there’s only so much cereal-stealing one can handle,” hoping all the saltiness that he was feeling towards them came through.**

**He instantly realized he should probably answer a few others in a nicer tone, though, so that one wouldn’t be singled out. It was difficult, but he knew it only had to be a few, and then he could stop.**

**But he may never have stopped if he hadn’t heard a pounding on his door. He stayed where he was, but he did tilt his head slightly when he heard Louise shout, “All right, Daniel, you’ve forced my hand!” before he heard a key turn in the lock and the next thing he knew she was standing in front of him.**

**“Two weeks,” she said. “Two weeks ago you and Phil had some sort of argument and now he’s gone, and guess what? Neither one of you thought to tell me. Of course Phil went to PJ, though, and I had to hear it from him. Am I nothing to either of you?”**

**“There was a video about it,” Dan said in a monotone voice.**

**“That video said absolutely nothing, as I’m sure you both intended. But as soon as he told me I was like, ‘I bet he’s just sitting there on the sofa staring at Twitter comments.’ And here you are, doing exactly that.”**

**Dan glanced up. “How did you get in my house?”**

**Louise held up a key. “Also from PJ, also courtesy of Phil. And guess what, Howell, I’m keeping it. Because you’re going to self-destruct all by yourself.”**

**“I was doing that anyway,” Dan said. “I’m still eating and practicing basic hygiene, if that was your concern. I’m not just going to lie in bed all day.”**

**“Mm, yes, well that brings me to my next point,” Louise said. “How have you been sleeping?”**

**Dan hoped the look that formed in his eyes wasn’t a panicked one. “Um, fine? Normal?”**

**“Well which is it?” she asked. “Is it fine, or is it normal?”**

**“Both?”**

**“Nope, because I happen to know those aren’t both the same for you.”**

**Dan winced. “Wonderful. Learn that from PJ as well, did we?”**

**“Doesn’t matter how I know, Dan, just that I do. And your eyes look terrible, so, we’re going to a doctor right now.”**

**“No!” This time Dan poured as much panic into his face as he could. “No, Louise, I don’t want medication, I absolutely refuse to take meds for this.”**

**“Dan, you can’t just live with that problem with nothing to help it.”**

**“My eyes look like this because…because I’ve been…” His brain scrambled to come up with a feasible excuse. “Um, crying? Crying. Yeah. Constantly.”**

**“Yeah, well I don’t doubt that for a second, either,” Louise said, grabbing his wrist. “Dan, I promise this will make you feel better.”**

**“Yeah, that’s what I hoped the first time I tried them. But they just aggravated it.”**

**Louise let go of his wrist and looked at him. “You tried medication before?”**

**Dan nodded. “And all that other stupid stuff about exercising, and eating healthy, and not taking naps…yeah I tried everything, Louise.”**

**“And the meds really didn’t work?”**

**“They…” Dan wasn’t sure how to put into words what they’d done to him. They’d helped him sleep, all right. The issue was then he couldn’t wake up, and that was one of the scariest things when he could feel his body trying to do it, and it wouldn’t let him. He’d felt like he was drowning, thrashing about, with a body and mind that weren’t cooperating, and were growing weaker by the second, and whenever he did wake up he was always terrified to go to sleep again.**

**“They aggravated it,” he repeated.**

**Louise stared at him for a while before she sighed. “Fine, but you need to promise me you’re going to do all that stupid stuff again and really try,” she said. “And if you can’t do it on…on your own, then you need to go to a doctor, okay? Deal?”**

**Dan hesitated for a long time before reluctantly whispering, “deal.”**

**Dan did his best at first to hide his grief from Louise, but she knew better. She came over every day, for several weeks, just to check on him, and he always just rolled his eyes and said he was fine, masking his pain all he could. But she must have known one day he would snap, and it happened when the loneliness finally kicked in and it came home to Dan that Phil really was gone and wasn’t coming back.**

**Louise was just sitting on the sofa and complaining about some company that had shipped her order to the wrong address, when Dan just threw his arms around her and cried into her shoulder. She calmly put her phone down and did nothing to try and stop his crying for a very long time.**

**After that Louise didn’t come over quite so often, but she did come over regularly. “You need something to do with your time,” she said. “You can’t just watch Netflix all day.”**

**“Believe me, I wish that’s what I was doing,” he said bitterly.**

**“What does that mean?”**

**“It means that I’m not really invested in the things I used to watch. Which isn’t fair, because without YouTube I have even more time on my hands than usual, so, you know, it would be a great time to get around to watching _Supernatural_ like I always said I’d do. But my attention span must be shot or something, because I get bored of every TV show now like two minutes in.”**

**“Interesting,” Louise said. “Wonder why that is?”**

**“I wish I knew! I miss watching anime!”**

**“Well, what if you had to watch them?”**

**“If I had to?”**

**“Yeah, like what if you were paid to write film reviews, or you rated TV episodes, or something like that?”**

**“That wouldn’t make them more interesting,” Dan said, even though secretly he thought it would be something he’d be good at. It took some time, but eventually he found his way into a ghostwriting gig, which certainly would have never been his first choice of career, but it was an interesting enough pursuit when he didn’t really need to make a lot of money.**

**He would have liked to tell Louise that things were better after that, and in a way they…sort of were. Dan would still randomly burst into tears, and he slowly began to realize that the reason he couldn’t care about watching new things anymore was because it wasn’t as enjoyable by himself. But the days got easier to get through, once he shoved all fear of the past and future out of his mind and just focused on every single day, and what he had to get through. Books and music were still enjoyable to him, and he could have cried with relief when he discovered that. In fact, he probably had cried. He cried a lot in that first year.**

**But if that began to ebb in the second year, his sleeping problem didn’t, and unfortunately that showed too much in his face for Louise not to notice. She made him keep up his end of the deal, and he was back on a prescription that, though admittedly was better than last time, still made him feel lethargic all the time. And then it was even harder to get out of bed than it had been already.**

**The time didn’t seem to go slowly for him, however, which surprised him. Weeks turned into months, and months turned into years, and everything was so much of a habit now, with all his energy simply poured into keeping his depression at bay, that he hardly noticed the passage of time. It wasn’t that it was easier now. It wasn’t that he didn’t miss Phil at all by the start of 2023. It was just that he’d learned to tune all that out, and keep pushing forward.**

**“I’m inclined to agree with you about the medication,” Louise said one day. He’d barely noticed she was there, but he kept her around because he knew he’d probably go insane if he didn’t keep in contact with at least one friend. She was virtually the only human interaction he had now. “I mean, I can’t tell how it’s affecting your sleep without actually observing you, and fortunately for both of us, I’m not into that sort of thing. But your eyes have looked consistently dark and heavy, even after you got the prescription, so I can only guess that it’s not really helping.”**

**“Well,” he said. “Maybe my eyes just always look like this.”**

**“Or maybe you’re still just crying constantly.”**

**Dan didn’t say anything, so Louise just sighed, and said, “Look, you gave it a shot Dan, and you told me it wouldn’t work and it didn’t, so I’m letting you out of the deal. You can stop with the meds if you want.”**

**“I already did,” he said. “Like a month ago.”**

**She sighed again. “But I don’t know what’s going to happen to you now, because honestly if there’s only one known thing in this universe that can help you after five years than I’m not sure how much longer you can go without it.”**

**“Neither do I,” Dan muttered. “Neither do I.”**

**…**

The silence continued for longer than any of them felt comfortable with, and Dan knew it. But he couldn’t care enough to do anything about it. Because everything, everything was rushing back to him now. Before he had only heard about Rachel’s death, but seeing it in all its graphic glory was another level of painful. And then reliving the fight that he’d tried so hard to move on from…especially in the past couple of days when Phil had come back into his life. Dan knew that they could never go back to what they were, but last night when Phil had helped him just like he used to, Dan had vowed to himself not to let Phil walk out of his life for good again.

And then they had to go and see what had broken them up in the first place. Which was just great.

But, something that PJ had said was bouncing around Dan’s head as well. Because he was right, and Rachel was alive, so that certainly didn’t make sense. Dan wished he only had Phil’s claim to go on, because then he would have said Phil was wrong, and that would be that. But no, he had been there at the police station, and then the foster institution, and then Rachel’s home. He knew that she had definitely survived that explosion, so why was she lying dead right there?

“I still think she’s actually dead,” Louise said suddenly, as if answering his question.

“She has to be,” Phil said in a faraway voice. “She couldn’t have survived that.”

“Did we butterfly effect?” PJ suddenly asked in a panicked tone. “You know, like what if our presence here changed what actually happened?”

“No,” Dan said. “You can’t change the future. Meaning everything that has happened in the past has already happened. Whether you’ve done it yet or not.”

“But if we leave right now, the future changes for us,” Phil said. “We go back to Dan and Phil of two days ago, never thinking to see the other again, imagining Rachel is dead.”

“Are you sure she’s actually alive?” PJ asked. “Did you see her?”

Dan shrugged. “Phil says he did.”

“I did,” Phil insisted.

“And then we kinda went back in time yesterday to trace what happened to her, so I’m inclined to believe him,” Dan admitted.

“I think you have to go back,” Louise said. “I think you have to save her life and tell that scientist to tell you she’s dead and give her to the police, just like what actually happened.”

“Why?” Dan asked. “That just puts us back where we started. If we could change that, we could just change…” he stopped. “Anything.”

“It wouldn’t put you back where you started,” Louise said. “It would make sure history proceeds as it’s meant to, because you know she wasn’t meant to be shot in a warehouse when she was eleven.”

“Maybe that is, though,” Phil said in a choked voice. “Maybe…”

“But that’s not what happened,” Louise insisted. “It’s not.”

“Yes it is, we just saw it! So clearly…”

“Clearly what happened is we came back here, we saw what happened, we went back and changed it,” PJ said.

“But we haven’t done that yet!” Phil protested. “Gone back and changed it, I mean. Because we can’t. We can’t, right Dan?”

“No,” Dan said slowly. “We can’t, so…we…must have been wrong. Somehow.”

“You weren’t wrong,” PJ said. “And you _did_ go back and change it, so, you two need to go back and fix this now.”

“How do you know?” Dan snapped. “How could you _possibly_ know that, PJ?”

“Because if you didn’t,” PJ said calmly, “None of us would be here right now.”

Dan and Phil looked at each other and then at PJ. “I don’t follow,” Phil said.

“You saw a girl you thought looked like her,” PJ said. “But why now? And why so strongly that you were willing to march up to Dan, convince him of the crazy idea that she’d be alive, and then put yourself through the pain of time-traveling just to prove it?”

Phil blushed, and Dan said, “Please, none of that is claims for…”

“And then you traced her back,” PJ said. “You traced her to the foster home that she’s been staying in, correct?”

Phil looked at Dan again. “I mean, yes?”

“And was there anything in that whole process that made you think it might not be her?”

“No?”

“And you said you called that scientist and he admitted to her being alive. So she’s alive. We can rule out that doubt. But here she is, dead in this timeline. Meaning you had to have gone back and saved her. Because if you hadn’t…if you go back home right now leaving her here, then you do change the future. And since you can’t do that, and we’re still all standing here with the knowledge of her actually being alive…”

“Oh my gosh,” Phil said with wide eyes. “He’s right. We wouldn’t be standing here if we hadn’t gone back and changed the past…or the future, whatever, so that means it’s one of those things that was always going to happen.”

Dan stared at him, and then at PJ, and then at Louise, more for help than for anything else. But she just grinned maddeningly and shrugged. Dan stood there and tried desperately to think of a reason why this was crazy, or why the logic didn’t add up, but he couldn’t. And really, the logic didn’t add up unless they went back, so, finally, aware that everyone’s eyes were on him, he sighed and retook his place in the front seat. “Okay,” he said. “I guess we’re interfering with our timelines and changing the future. Charlie would burst a blood vessel if he could see us now.”

He hesitated just once before pulling the lever, but Phil reached out and put his hand on top of his, gently guiding him to pull it, even though he doubled over in pain almost immediately after.

Louise winced. “Seriously? It happens every time? You never get used to it?”

“It gets worse every time,” Phil said through clenched teeth, and just like he had the previous day, Dan felt the need to kneel down and grab Phil to his chest, blocking out the lights and everything else until Phil was okay. Dan knew how that PJ and Louise were probably nudging each other in triumph, but he just chose not to look at them until he stood up.

“Huh,” he said.

“What?” Louise asked.

“I drove a little bit forward so I wouldn’t have to check the location,” Dan said. “Because I thought, you know, _we_ would be in that spot. But we’re not. There’s not two vans, there’s just us.”

“Well yeah, this is the version where she lives,” PJ said. “You erased that other timeline.”

“No wonder Charlie told us never to interfere,” Phil whispered with wide eyes.

“Still,” Dan said. “If everything in time has already happened, then it’s weird we broke into a different timeline. I mean, if we’d jumped in and saved her in that one, then would that have just become this timeline? The timeline that happened?”

“But you didn’t jump in and save her,” PJ pointed out. “So, no. It couldn’t have. But you had to see that one in order to progress like you’re about to.”

“My brain hurts,” Louise complained.

Phil stared at PJ as he and Dan climbed out of the van. “How do you know so much about this?” he asked.

“Don’t question him, he’s just making it up as he goes,” Dan said, shoving him out.

“I’m right, though!” PJ called after them.

Dan marched determinedly up to the warehouse, knowing he would completely lose his nerve if he even thought about what they had to do for a moment. He wished time machines really were a reset button, but this was it, this was their reset, and if they blew it…

“What are we going to say?” Phil asked, as they stopped and listened to Rachel’s argument with Charlie again.

“I don’t know,” Dan confessed.

“Maybe we don’t have to worry,” Phil said. “You know, since we’ve already done this? In the past?”

“In the universe’s past.”

“Yeah, but the universe knows what we did, so it will help us not mess up, right?”

Dan looked at him worriedly. “I hate this,” he said. “All of this. I’ve missed…a lot of things in the last five years, but I never missed time traveling.”

Phil gave a small smile and bumped Dan’s shoulder with his. “I didn’t, either.”

Dan smiled in return, but dropped it as soon as the explosion happened, and he and Phil marched forward into the warehouse.

“Is she dead?” Felix asked.

“No,” Charlie said. “But she…”

“Boss,” Felix said urgently.

Charlie looked up, and at first he looked sorrowfully at them as he stood up, but as he got nearer he squinted at them. Then he looked behind them, and stepped towards the door until he could see the van. “Oh, no,” he said. “You didn’t. Please tell me you didn’t.”

Dan had no idea what to say, and cursed the universe for not helping him. But Phil just stuck his chin out. “Well, you’ve already seen our van, Charlie, so I guess you know what’s going on.”

“No,” Charlie replied. “No I absolutely do not, so please tell me what on this good earth could have _possibly_ prompted you to disobey my only two rules and try to change your own timelines?”

“You had a lot more than just two rules,” Dan said. “But believe it or not, we’re still…following them.”

 “Kinda,” Phil added.

“We think, anyway,” Dan said.

“And we definitely hope,” Phil said.

“And we’re not helping our case, so you’re just going to have to trust future us,” Dan added hastily, as he watched Charlie’s face turn darker and redder.

“Trust you?” Charlie spat. “You barely know what you’re doing!”

Dan sighed. “Well, what do you want to hear? That Felix is about to shoot her, and then you tell us she’s dead, but then Phil sees her in the future so we know she’s _not,_ so we come back and watch Felix shoot her and realize we have to go back again and stop that from happening so that the timeline can proceed as we know it’s meant to?”

Charlie stared at them, and Dan wondered if he’d actually managed to screw everything up, and whether he’d feel it when he faded away from existence, and if there’d be another Dan to replace him or if he’d actually kill existence for everyone.

But then Charlie’s face relaxed, and he looked them almost in respect. “Well,” he said. “You two aren’t complete idiots after all. I guess she had a good influence on you.”

“Wait, really?” Phil asked. “That’s it?”

Charlie put his hand out. “Hand me the gun, Felix.”

“What?” Felix asked. “I don’t have a…” he sighed and put a gun in Charlie’s hand. “Fine, whatever, I’m not about to argue with a couple of time travelers.”

“You killed her,” Phil said coldly.

“No I didn’t,” Felix said calmly. “Charlie just took my gun, and here she is breathing in front of us.”

“Barely,” Charlie reminded everyone.

“She’s probably going to die anyway, so it wouldn’t technically have been murder if I sped it along…”

“Yes it would have,” three voices protested.

“Yeah, well, that’s why I didn’t do it. But she’s terrifying, and she’s dangerous, and she could have gotten us killed and will probably end up being a psychopath if you don’t let her die right here.”

“I know,” Charlie said. “Will you go get the memory scanner, please?”

Felix narrowed his eyes, but did as he was asked.

Charlie turned to Dan and Phil. “Okay,” he said. “Not that you’re supposed to tell me what happens next, but, what am I supposed to do next?”

“Um,” Phil looked at Dan. “I mean, we know what you do with _her,_ but…”

“But I don’t know that we should tell you that,” Dan said. “I mean whatever’s meant to happen is meant to happen, right?”

Charlie smirked. “Never would have thought it,” he said. “But you two finally matured. Shame it couldn’t happen before.”

“But I do think you should know that Phil and I are coming right now,” Dan said. “And you need to tell us that she’s dead, and someday when we demand to know why you lied to us…well, just know that two days later we’ll see we were the ones who told you to do that and we’re sorry.”

Charlie nodded slowly, and then turned to see Felix walking back and handing out a small tablet. Charlie took it and tapped the screen a few times. He glanced at Dan and Phil, but when they made no move to stop him, he pointed it towards Rachel for a second before lowering it and sighing.

“Did you do it?” Felix asked.

Charlie just nodded.

“Are you sure?” Dan asked. “Nothing…happened.”

“Yes it did. She’ll remember meeting us and coming back here in a time machine, but she’ll have no memory of anything after that first night.” Charlie looked down and tapped the screen again. “If she’d been conscious you would have seen it knock her out. Like this.”

He suddenly held it up to Felix, who gasped and widened his eyes. But he could do nothing else before dropping to the floor and lying still.

Dan and Phil just stared at him, and then up at Charlie. “Why’d you do that?” Phil breathed.

“Because if she’s too dangerous to remember anything about this lab, then he is, too,” Charlie sighed. “I’ve never wanted to use this thing before; I think everyone’s entitled and obligated to keep their memories, but if a person is going to become a threat to others, then…” he stopped and glanced down worriedly.

“Thank you,” Dan said softly. “For everything.”

Charlie gave a small smile and nodded. “You bet. I’ve had the time of my life on this project, and I’ll definitely miss all you kids, but it looks like it’s over now and I can’t really say I’m sorry about it. I think it came a bit before its time.”

Dan tilted his head and looked at Rachel, then reached down and lightly stroked the top of her headband. “Forgive us, darling,” he whispered.

“I’m glad you came back to rescue her though,” Charlie said. “Because she…she’s got a future, you know. A really great one.”

“Really?” Phil asked.

Charlie nodded. “Remember when I scanned her to see if you could take her back? I’m still not going to tell you…exactly what I saw, but, she’ll be a big name in science and technology.”

Dan and Phil smiled back at Charlie, but then Charlie’s smile dropped and he began pushing them towards the door. “Seriously though, you need to leave, because I’m pretty sure your past selves aren’t meant to see you.”

Dan and Phil scrambled towards their van, and looked back to see Charlie running to meet their past selves just like they’d seen before. Louise and PJ looked ready to burst with questions, but they respectfully kept them to themselves and Dan and Phil watched the scene in front of them. But as soon as Charlie had left, they immediately took their seats and got out of there.

Under no circumstances was Dan willing to watch their fight again, and he knew that Phil felt completely the same way.


	12. Come Home

**The doorbell rang, and Phil watched Cornelia get up to go answer it. “Well it’s about time,” he heard her say. “He’s spent the whole day moping. He never does that. He gets irritated, but he always picks himself back up, because he _never_ mopes, PJ!”**

**The voices got closer as PJ and Cornelia walked back into the room. “Hey, Phil!” PJ smiled.**

**“See?” Cornelia asked. “He’s just sitting there, watching that stupid video over and over again.”**

**“It’s a good video,” Phil argued.**

**“It’s a terrible video,” Martyn said. “You two are sitting there, smiling like robots, saying everything’s fine but that you’re quitting YouTube and the Internet forever. The least you could have done is be honest with them.”**

**“Yeah, if you guys had spelled out all your reasons for leaving I’m pretty sure you would have seen how pointless they were,” Cornelia said.**

**Phil looked up at PJ weakly, who was smiling sympathetically at him. “I’m being bullied by my own family,” Phil moaned. PJ giggled softly.**

**Cornelia gave a loud sigh. “PJ, will you please just drag him back to the flat so they can sort this mess out.”**

**“Look,” Phil said. “If Dan hadn’t wanted me to leave, then he would have told me not to. The only way he’d have let me walk off without one word of protest is if it’s what he actually wanted.”**

**“Uh-huh,” Martyn said. “I think you might be underestimating his pride just a tiny bit.”**

**“Well, you’re underestimating mine.”**

**“Thanks, you guys, but I’ve got it from here,” PJ said quietly.**

**“You’d better,” Cornelia said, as she and Martyn left the room.**

**PJ watched them go, then turned to look at Phil. “How are you doing?” he asked.**

**Phil raised only his eyes. “Me? I’m fine, I’m so fine, I’m…” his voice trembled, and he stopped. “I’m not going back,” he whispered. “I…don’t think I can. I don’t think I even want to. He blames me for this, and honestly he’s…not wrong.”**

**“Mm,” PJ said. “That’s not what your followers think. They got it into their heads that Dan kicked you out, and Dan’s seems to be giving weight to that idea.”**

**“Idiot,” Phil said. “Honestly, I really don’t think he needs me as much as I need…needed him. Not anymore. Really the only thing I worry about is his stupid sleeping problem.”**

**PJ narrowed his eyes. “What sleeping problem?”**

**Phil gave a frustrated sigh. “He’s had this stupid issue ever since I met him where he can’t sleep most nights, so he’d come into my stupid room when that happened and I’d help him get through it.”**

**“Interesting,” PJ said. “Helped him how, exactly?”**

**Phil shot him a look. “How do you think, PJ.”**

**“And he’s had that problem ever since you met him?”**

**“Yes.”**

**“Why?”**

**“I don’t know, there were like several contributing factors. The important thing is that I really doubt he can cope with it on his own.”**

**“I wouldn’t make that assumption; there’s a hundred ways to fight insomnia.”**

**“It’s not insomnia!” Phil burst out. “Well, I guess officially it is, but none of those ways have worked in the past.”**

**PJ was silent. “Look,” he said quietly. “I’m not going to tell you to go and make up with him, because I agree that you and he both need time to cool off. And if you’ve cooled off and you still don’t want to go back to him, then I’m not even going to resist that, because you have spent a lot of your young adult life living with him and I get it if you need a change.” He stopped, and Phil waited for the “but.”**

**“But,” PJ continued slowly, “I am afraid that you’re only doing this for him, and if you never make up over a misunderstanding, then that’s an even bigger mistake than leaving him in the first place.”**

**“I’m not doing it for him,” Phil said. “I…just…want to bury as much of the past several months as possible. I have to. And if that includes Dan, then it includes Dan.”**

**“Why?” PJ asked. “What actually happened? What was the fight about?”**

**Phil his mouth to say that he couldn’t tell him. He wanted to say that it was really nothing, it was a slight disagreement that neither would give in to, and it just got out of hand and grew into something big and catastrophic. Because he couldn’t tell PJ. He’d gotten on Dan for telling Louise, and if he now told PJ there would be absolutely no case for him to not go and apologize to Dan.**

**But it was already eating away at him, and he knew he had to tell somebody. “We went to the past,” he said in a soft voice.**

**“I’m sorry, you what?”**

**“Went to the past,” Phil said, a tiny bit louder. “Our friend who we thought was crazy for wanting to invent time travel? Wasn’t so crazy, as it turned out. And Dan and I went to the past and rescued a little condemned slave child who was massively intelligent, and we couldn’t decide what to do with her and so we…started arguing, and…” His voice began uncontrollably cracking, and he had to stop to let the tears start flowing. He leaned forward and buried his face in his hands, trying to keep the sobs muffled but utterly failing. “And now she’s dead,” he gasped. “And now she’s dead, and we…and I…killed her.”**

**He was vaguely aware of PJ sitting next to him and putting a hand on his shoulder, but he was too wrapped up in his thoughts to notice anything until PJ finally said, “Phil, I want to understand you but…you’re going to have to give me more details. Start from the beginning.”**

**So Phil took several deep breaths and waited until he knew for sure that his voice wasn’t going to betray him again. And then he told PJ a heavily abridged version of what he and Dan had experienced ever since walking in and seeing Adam bleeding out on the warehouse floor. He willed himself not to start crying again as he again he approached the part where she died and he and Dan had said things that Phil already wished had never been said. He decided to just brush over those last parts with very few details.**

**But they were enough, and PJ sat there quietly, looking at his hands. “Wow,” he said in a hushed voice. “That’s…a lot to process.”**

**“I know.”**

**“That’s why you never told us though, I guess.”**

**“Well, Dan told Louise.” Phil suddenly ached for Dan, wanting to tell him that he understood now why Dan had felt the need to do that. “I don’t know how long she’s known, though. He knew I wouldn’t be happy that she knew.”**

**“Here’s the thing, though.” PJ nudged Phil until Phil looked at him. “You didn’t kill her, okay? I know you haven’t told me everything, but I know you were both trying to do what was best for her, and what happened was an accident, so if that’s what this is about, you need to let it go right now.”**

**Phil wanted to laugh, though there was nothing funny about it. He knew PJ had to say that, and there was even a part of Phil that knew he was right. But there was no way Phil could let it go that easily. And if it was going to eat him up for years to come, that and the fight with Dan, then it was what he deserved. He deserved to have lost them both on the same day, and he deserved to feel regret about it for the rest of his life. Dan was absolutely better off without him, and Rachel would have been too, if only he could have seen that.**

**But what Phil couldn’t bear was his family and friends continuing to worry about him, and tell him that he needed to fix this. The only way to get them off his back was to act like he was fine. He stopped watching the video, he stopped moping, and he moved back to the Isle of Man, somewhere between Brighton and his parents’ house, and with PJ’s help he got a job being a video editor. And then it was very easy to convince himself that he _was_ fine. He was getting along without Dan much better than he’d feared. He had PJ and lots of childhood friends, and now he was seeing his parents regularly and doing a job that he’d gone to school for. He was completely happy. **

**Until a year had gone by and he started breaking down on random occasions. It got so bad though that one night Phil called PJ and without meaning to just started crying and rambling. PJ very patiently listened through it, and spoke very calmly and comfortingly, so calling PJ when he was feeling Dan’s absence particularly strongly became a common occurrence.**

**“Do you ever talk to Louise anymore?” PJ asked one day.**

**Phil was startled by the question, but he decided not to even try and give excuses. “No,” he said, willing PJ to understand. “I’ve…I only rang her once. After I left.”**

**PJ nodded, and although Phil kind of wanted to ask where that had come from, he decided against it. “Do you still talk to Dan?” he asked instead.**

**“No,” PJ answered. “I texted him once, right after it happened, just letting him know I was there for him. But he never responded, and I never texted him again.”**

**“Well,” Phil replied. “That’s nothing against you. Dan just doesn’t respond to texts.”**

**“I know,” PJ laughed. “Still. If he chooses to reach out to me, he knows he can whenever.” He paused. “I know you’re waiting for that too, mate.”**

**“No I’m not,” Phil said harshly. “It was almost two years ago, and I’m just as happy now as I’ve ever been. Dan was a chapter of my life that I acknowledge was big, and great, but is over now. Okay?”**

**And after that Phil truly tried to let it be. He stopped calling PJ, he stopped crying randomly, and he stopped making any mention of his friend to anyone.**

**But he didn’t stop feeling the heartache, no matter how much he was squashing it down.**

**…**

Phil absent-mindedly stabbed at his food with a chopstick. He wasn’t even trying to pick it up, but the small part of his brain that was still in the moment was just trying to see if he could pick up a noodle just by poking a chopstick through it. Eventually he realized that what he was doing was completely futile, and he glanced up to see if anyone else was doing something more productive.

They weren’t. Louise was trying to grasp her straw, but was looking anywhere except the direction of the cup she was holding. Dan was using his chopstick to draw patterns in the few drops of soy sauce on the table, and PJ was staring at the menu on someone else’s table.

Phil coughed in the hopes that it would inspire him with something to say, but it didn’t, and none of them even took notice. Phil vaguely wondered what would have happened if he’d never snapped out of it. Would they all have sat there, drowning in their own thoughts, until their corpses rotted away?

His question was answered by the waitress coming over and handing the bill to Dan, at which point everyone did snap back to reality.

“So,” PJ said. “What’s the next step?”

“Don’t rush them, PJ, they’re probably still trying to figure that out,” Louise scolded.

“Not really,” Dan sighed. “We know what comes next, don’t we, Phil?”

Phil swallowed. He didn’t really know what Dan was referring to, but really, he could only be implying one thing. “We have to find her,” he said. “We have to confront her.”

“Well, that’s a strong word,” Dan said. “But yeah. We know too much to just continue ignoring her, and she’s looking for us anyway, so, better to just meet her halfway.”

“Not tonight, though,” Louise said. “I absolutely refuse to look for her tonight.”

“I don’t think you two can come along for this part,” Dan said gently.

“Well then I absolutely forbid you two from looking for her tonight. It’s already 7:30, which makes no sense to me, because I swear we just had breakfast.”

“Well we did get up late,” PJ reminded her.

“Yes, but isn’t the point of a time machine to come back as soon as you left?”

Dan and Phil slowly shook their heads. “You have to come back after however many hours you’ve been gone,” Phil said mechanically. “Otherwise you’re not in sync with your timeline.”

“Well,” Louise continued. “I don’t want you searching for her at night. In some dark alleyway or whatever, where she’s got all her murder weapons.”

“No,” Dan said. “No, we won’t be looking for her tonight.”

Phil nodded. “There’s only so much history one can handle in a day.”

No one really had a reply to that, and the silence continued as they shuffled out of the restaurant and into the street.

“So,” PJ said. “You’re going solo from here?”

Phil smiled. “If you count two people as solo.”

“Well, just let us know the outcome,” Louise said. “Obviously.”

PJ nodded. “Thanks for involving us today,” he said. “See you soon. Both of you, Dan.”

“Wow, way to attack me,” Dan said with a weak smile.

PJ grinned, and waved as he headed towards the train station. Louise hugged them both and hurried off to meet her husband in a shop around the corner, leaving Dan and Phil to wait for their cab.

Phil wasn’t sure how to feel that both of them just assumed Phil would be returning to the flat with Dan. He supposed it made sense that he’d spend the night there again, but since neither of them said a word on the journey back, he wondered if it would be awkward once they arrived and if he just stood around. He was going to avoid that at all costs if he could, so as soon as they stepped through the front door he said, “I’m going to take a shower, is that cool?”

Dan just nodded and made his way towards the lounge, but by the time Phil was finished, he could hear the other shower running. He didn’t know if he’d quite avoided the awkwardness yet, but at least Dan wasn’t concerned about treating him like a regular visitor like he’d seemed to be two days ago.

Phil sat in the lounge to wait for Dan, and turned the TV on. By the time Dan entered the room Phil was flicking through Dan’s “Continue Watching” list on Netflix.

“What are you doing?” Dan asked.

“I wanted to see if we’re still watching the same stuff. Not a lot here, though, do you not watch Netflix anymore? How do you survive?”

Dan shrugged. “I guess YouTubers just hold all my interest now.”

“ _Sherlock_ Season 5 is on this list, though,” Phil said.

“Yeah, I’ve seen the first two episodes, but not the finale.”

“Hey, me too!” Phil said. “We should watch it right now.”

It was pretty dark by that point, but Phil was sure it wasn’t just the light from the TV that he suddenly caught in Dan’s eyes as he said, “Okay.”

For Phil, _Sherlock_ episodes always went by quickly, but this one in particular definitely didn’t feel like an hour and a half by the time the credits rolled up the screen. Dan nodded in satisfaction as he reached for the remote. “Much better than Season 4,” he said.

“Definitely,” Phil agreed. “Which is good, since we’ll probably have to wait ten more years for the sixth season.”

“They do know those actors won’t stay young forever, right?”

“Are you seriously implying that Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman won’t still look amazing when they’re 80?”

Dan giggled, and pulled his legs up, hugging his knees to his chest. “That was fun,” he said.

“Yeah,” Phil said softly. “It was.”

Dan laid his cheek on his knees so that he was facing Phil. “What are we going to say to her?” he asked suddenly.

Phil sighed. “I don’t know. I’ve been trying not to think about that.”

“Yeah,” Dan whispered anxiously.

“Dan,” Phil said. “Seriously. Don’t think about it.”

“I…yeah, I know.”

“Most likely she’ll do most of the talking anyway,” Phil said, nudging him as playfully as he could.

But Dan didn’t respond to that, and after several minutes of wrestling with himself, Phil stood up. “Come on,” he said.

Dan raised his head.

Phil sighed. “Don’t give me that look, Dan,” he said. “You and I both know that I may not still be here tomorrow night, so, we’re going to get over the awkwardness and try to postpone your next 108 minutes, okay?” He hesitated, and then added, “Unless you think you can do that by yourself.”

Dan drew in a ragged breath. “No,” he said. “I can’t.” He stood up and followed Phil down the hall to his room, and slowly sat down on it as Phil turned the light off. “It’s still early,” he whispered.

“In your case, that’s entirely irrelevant. Now get in already.”

Dan obeyed, and Phil walked around to the other side. He stared at Dan’s duvet for a second, and then carefully climbed into it, propping up a pillow behind him so that it raised his head slightly, preventing him from lying all the way down.

Dan had been sitting up, picking at the duvet, staring at Phil, but just as Phil had been about to speak Dan quickly laid down, putting his head on Phil’s chest, and his fist up near his mouth.

“Why do you do that?” Phil asked softly.

“Do what?”

“The fist near your mouth. Like you’re hiding it.”

“I don’t know. I feel weird having my face exposed. Don’t judge me, Phil, I’m not exactly the most experienced sleeper!”

Phil giggled, noticing that he and Dan were both speaking in whispers, just like they used to. He wrapped one arm around Dan and brought the other one up to his head, stroking it gently. Dan began tracing tiny circles on Phil’s shoulder with the very tip of his finger.

“You okay?” Phil asked.

“I will be.”

Phil absolutely intended not to speak after that, because he knew Dan would fall asleep in a matter of minutes if he just kept his mouth shut, but because Dan was continuing to trace patterns on his shirt, he decided it would be all right to say something he very much wanted to say.

“Why’d you let them think you kicked me out?”

The tracing stopped, and Phil held his breath.

“I didn’t mean to,” Dan said slowly. “I said something vague that didn’t deny it, and everyone just kinda took that as confirmation, and I thought, well, is that so far off? Didn’t I, in a way?”

“Dan, I’m the one that ended us and you know it.” Phil was suddenly extremely grateful for their unspoken rule of always whispering in the dark. It would be a lot harder for them to start fighting if they could put no punch in their words.

“Well, we didn’t give any explanation or any information to determine whose fault it was, so I decided to just let them have their closure. Even if it wasn’t true. It wasn’t harming you, so why would you care?”

“I cared because I knew it wasn’t true.”

“But you still blamed me for something, and that’s why you left.”

Phil gave a short laugh. “I left so I could have the satisfaction of you asking me to come back.”

Dan didn’t answer for a very long time, but when he did, it was not what Phil would have expected him to say. “Yeah, I finally put that together today.”

“Dan, I—”

“No, you were right, it’s like when a little kid announces they’re running away, but really they only go to the end of the street, waiting for their parent to come find them.”

“Exactly, it was petty, and I shouldn’t have done that.”

“It wasn’t petty.” Dan was again silent for a while, but finally he continued, “It wasn’t petty. You needed to see if I cared, because if I had, I would have come running down the street.”

“You’re really laying on the flattery by comparing me to a little kid.”

Dan chuckled. “I’m not meaning to be condescending. Quite the opposite, actually, I’m saying you were correct, because when I didn’t come, what would you think but that I didn’t care anymore? That I was condoning this whole ending our friendship thing?” Dan began tapping his fingers anxiously on Phil’s shoulder. “I’m sorry I didn’t fight for you, Phil. I’m sorry that I left you at the end of the street. I’m so, so sorry that I never asked you to come back.”

Even though Phil had wanted to hear those words every day for five years, he couldn’t have imagined how sweet and beautiful and heart-warming it would be to actually hear them in person. But at the same time he knew that Dan wasn’t the only one present to blame. “I’m sorry too,” he said softly. “I should have just come back; I shouldn’t have tried to make a point. It wasn’t fair to leave the ball in your court.”

Dan turned his face to bury it in Phil’s chest, and Phil could feel him starting to tremble, very slightly, and almost imperceptibly.

“Hey,” Phil said, “Dan, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

“That’s not the end of it, though,” Dan moaned. “We should have been past just hitting each other over the head with our opinions about what to do with her.”

“I know,” Phil admitted. “We should have tried harder to find a middle ground for that instead of just saying the same thing over and over to each other.”

“You think?” Dan breathed. “We’re such idiots.”

“Yeah, we really were the cause of our own demise. Demises?”

Dan tried to laugh, but it came out as more of a sob, and he turned his face back out, breathing heavily. “I’m sorry, Phil,” he said, voice noticeably trembling by now. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry that I was such a pushy jerk, and I’m sorry for telling Louise, and I’m sorry that I ever, ever let you think that I didn’t care, and…and I know that you never needed me as much as I did you, but you always were needed by me, you _always_ were, and sleeping has been hell without you, and…” He had to stop because his voice was so wobbly, and though Phil would have liked nothing more than to start sobbing as well, he knew he had to be the strong one here.

He buried his face in Dan’s hair and closed his eyes, shushing him softly. He switched from stroking his hair to rubbing his back. “Dan,” he said. “Dan, I’m just as much in need for forgiveness as you, and you’ve got mine, you know, you’ve had it ever since I left, but unfortunately I didn’t know that until I came back and saw you again.”

Dan drew a shuddering breath as he tried to calm down and listen.

“And me not needing you as much as you need me? That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. And you know it, because you remember what you said to me? That I wouldn’t be able to live without you. And you were absolutely right.”

Dan lay perfectly still, letting his sobs subside the rest of the way, until eventually he began slowly tracing patterns on Phil’s shirt again. Phil couldn’t keep the lump in his throat down anymore, and he let a couple of silent tears fall, hoping desperately that Dan wasn’t looking at him.

But by the time Phil’s vision had cleared enough where he could see his friend’s face again, Dan had closed his eyes. The tracing had also once again ceased, and Dan simply murmured sleepily, “But you did live without me. For five years. And you were just fine.”

Phil brought his hand up so he was stroking the back of Dan’s head, while the other one remained around his waist, and hugged him as tightly as he could in that position. “No,” he said, in a voice lighter than a feather. “I existed without you. And that’s not the same thing at all.”

Even though Dan was lying on top of him, Phil could feel him trying to nestle even closer, as if he wasn’t yet close enough. Phil could understand the feeling. He could hear Dan’s breathing slow considerably and could feel his body going limp, but before Dan completely drifted off, he mumbled something that sounded very faraway and dreamlike, but still coherent enough.

“I want you to come home, Phil.”

Phil felt like he’d been punched in the gut, but not in a bad way. It was like he’d been hit with a thousand tons of happiness, and he felt the lump in his throat returning. But he managed to swallow it this time, and bent down to lightly kiss the top of Dan’s head.

“Okay,” he breathed, not caring whether or not Dan was still awake enough to hear him. “Okay.”


	13. Confrontation

Dan and Phil were both startled awake by Phil’s phone ringing. Dan let out a groan as Phil struggled to reach the table on the other side of the bed. It was difficult with Dan lying across him still, and even more difficult with him whimpering in protest. “I know, Dan, I know,” he said, sighing and laying a hand on his back in an attempt to sooth him.

But that wasn’t working, so finally he had to push Dan off of him in order to finally grab the phone. “Phil,” Dan whined. “Make it stop.”

Phil turned the phone over in his hand. “It’s PJ,” he said in a low voice.

Dan’s eyes snapped open, and he propped himself up on one elbow, leaning over Phil’s arm to look at the phone.

“I have to answer it, right?” Phil asked. “Like, why would he be calling me at…” he squinted at the time. “Six-thirty in the morning?”

Dan bit his lip and nodded, so Phil swiped the answer button and pressed the speaker. “Hey, PJ, what’s going on?” he asked. 

There was a silence, and then a voice said, “Hi, Phil.”

But it wasn’t PJ’s voice. It was a girl’s voice, and neither one doubted for a second whose voice it was. Interesting how cold one’s blood could actually get when they were shocked enough.

Phil opened his mouth but nothing came out.

“Dan, are you there too?” the girl asked.

Phil looked at Dan, who was just staring at the phone, swallowing. “He’s here,” Phil said.

“I would like an audible confirmation, please.”

Dan sat the rest of the way up and crossed his legs, bumping his knee against Phil’s. “I’m here, Rach,” he said in a hoarse voice.

“Oh, good, so you do remember me,” she said. “That’s going to make all of this so much easier.”

Phil stared at Dan, who was staring right back at him. “Why…how are you calling from PJ’s phone?” Phil managed to stammer.

“Mm, yes, well the initial plan was to follow you to back home when I saw you come out of that restaurant,” Rachel said. “But that could have very easily led to you escaping to the warehouse and using the machine to run away from me. So I jumped your friend and took his phone instead, so I could guard the machine and have you come to me.”

“You jumped him?” Dan asked in alarm. “Did you hurt him?”

“Wasn’t really paying attention to that part. He was pretty surprised though, I’ll tell you that, and after he let go of it I let him be. It wasn’t my intention to harm him, if I did. I neglected to have him unlock it, though, so I’ve spent the entire night trying to hack into it. And now here we are.”

“So you’re at the warehouse?” Dan asked. “How did you find it?”

“Oh, that part was easy. I knew finding you would be the hard part. But we don’t need to go over all of this now, because yes, I’m at the warehouse, and yes, I expect both of you to come meet me here. Now.”

Dan leaned forward and rubbed his eyes, while Phil continued staring at the phone like it was glued to his hand.

“I did only take his phone so I could contact you,” Rachel said. “But it’s also kind of a hostage, you know. Easy for your friend to replace, I’m sure, but, looking through his emails, and his notes app, and his contacts, and his google maps history? There’s a lot of damage I could do with this. And a lot of people I could find.”

“Okay, okay,” Dan said. “You don’t need to threaten us, we’re coming.”

“Good,” she said sweetly, and promptly hung up.

Phil let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, and Dan flopped backwards on the bed, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Well, at least our next step is decided for us,” he said.

“Yeah,” Phil breathed, as he scrolled through the contacts list on his phone, tapped one, and then waited as it started ringing.

Dan slid his fingers down his face. “Who are you—”

“Sh,” Phil said, as a “hello?” came from the other end.

“Sophie! Hey! Have you seen PJ?”

“Uh, no, he was visiting you, I thought? I hear you and Dan made up, which is nice.”

“Oh, is that how he put it?” Dan muttered.

“Dan? Is that you? Oh my goodness, how have you been?”

“Fine, thanks, how about you, Sophie?”

“Yeah, I’ll make sure you and Dan catch up real soon, but right now I…well, PJ kinda lost his phone, so I really hope he made it home okay,” Phil said urgently.

“He left his phone there?” Sophie sighed. “Well, that would explain why he didn’t text me.”

“Would you just go over his flat and make sure he’s okay?” Phil asked.

“Of course, but is everything all right? You sound worried.”

“Of course we’re worried, this is still a pretty unnatural hour for us to be awake,” Dan said, trying to laugh. “Just tell him we’ll try to get his phone back to him. A…an old friend of ours…called us with it, so we’re going to get it back from her.”

“Okay,” She said. “Thanks for letting me know.”

“Sure,” Phil said. “Bye, Sophie.” He hung up and sprung out of bed, rushing towards his backpack and digging around, praying it still had clean clothes. “Dan, get up, we’ve got to go!”

“Yeah, I heard,” Dan said, but he was slower about dragging himself out of the bed and changing into his normal clothes. He then walked very deliberately down to wait for a car, even though Phil was bouncing around him like an anxious puppy.

“Well this is terrifying,” Dan said. “But you were right, she’ll probably do most of the talking.”

“Yeah.”

Dan chewed his lip. “You know we should really call the police.”

“Yeah,” Phil said again.

After a moment of neither one making a movement, Dan said, “I’m not doing it.”

“Well, I’m not, either.”

“Okay then.”

“She’s got high-tech weapons,” Phil said. “Really it would be unfair and unjust to bring the local police into this.”

“Agreed.”

“Good,” Phil sighed.

Neither one said anything else for the rest of the ride there, but when Phil’s knee-bouncing got violent enough, Dan just laid his hand gently on Phil’s knee to still it.

But both of them were extremely anxious when they once again were standing in front of the warehouse doors. Neither was in much of a hurry to push them open, even though both were very aware of how alarming it would be if she suddenly opened them and just caught them standing there.

“In case we die here,” Dan said. “I’ve got a question.”

“Okay?”

“Did I tell you I wanted us to live together again or did I dream that?”

Phil reached over to squeeze Dan’s hand. “You didn’t dream it.”

Dan nodded. “I know I meant to say it,” he said. “But then when I woke up I couldn’t remember if I actually did it.”

“Yeah, I kind of doubted you’d remember. You probably don’t remember what I said in response, either.”

Dan looked sideways at him. “If I didn’t dream the question then I probably didn’t dream the answer.”

“Well, did you think I said okay?”

“Yes.”

“Then no, you didn’t dream the answer.”

Dan looked down at his shoes and smiled, squeezed Phil’s hand back, and then lifted his chin and strode forward, with Phil right beside him.

They pushed open the doors confidently enough, but the sight of a crazy-looking gun facing them caused Phil’s hands to fly up, and he immediately took a step back. “Woah,” he said.

Dan put his hands up as well, but he gasped when he saw the girl holding the gun. “Oh my gosh, she’s _beautiful_ ,” he said.

“Right?” Phil asked, looking at him. “I told you she was!”

Rachel’s face had been stern and cold when they’d first stepped in, but her look seemed to falter for a moment as she looked at them. Her eyes lingered on Dan’s face in particular, and for a moment her hand seemed to be lowering, but then she tossed her head, and the stern look stole over her face again.

“I’m going to need you to hand over your phones,” she said. “Unlocked, please. I don’t have time to do any more hacking tonight.”

“Don’t you have something by now that unlocks phones?” Dan asked, handing her his.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s at home, though. I only carry so many devices with me at a time.” She looked at his phone, and then laid it on a small folding table next to her. “Sociable as ever I see. Your last call was three days ago.”

“Is that all you wanted it for?” Dan asked. “To see when my last call was so you could roast me?”

“I need to know if you told anyone you were coming here,” Rachel said, taking Phil’s phone. “Sophie. Who’s Sophie?”

“You don’t know her,” Phil said.

“Obviously, that’s why I’m asking you.”

“She’s PJ’s fiancé. You know, the guy you jumped?” Dan offered. “We wanted to let her know why he hadn’t been in touch.”

“Uh huh,” she said, pulling a device out of her pocket, and holding it over the phone.

Phil gasped. “Oh my gosh, you still have that?”

She whipped her head up, glared at him, and then lifted the gun up again, pointing it at two folding chairs. “Have a seat,” she said calmly.

Both of them sat down in the chairs as their conversation with Sophie played from the phone. Or maybe the device. They really couldn’t be sure which was actually relaying the conversation, but whichever it was, they listened to the entire thing, and at the end Rachel seemed satisfied that there was nothing incriminating in it.

“Where’d the chairs come from?” Dan asked. “And the table?”

Rachel turned and pointed her gun at them again. “Back of the van.”

“You broke into our van?” Phil asked.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t break anything. I’ve got a device that opens car doors.”

“Like a sonic screwdriver?” Phil asked.

She opened her mouth, and her frown again wavered, but she shut her mouth and bit her lip, before reaching into her purse and pulling out two metal bands. “Put these on,” she said, handing them to Phil, before reaching into the bag and pulling out two more, which she gave to Dan.

They both carefully put one on each wrist, and snapped it into place, though there was no chain connecting them, so they weren’t handcuffs, which confused them slightly. But Rachel pulled a small remote out of her bag and pressed it. An electric beam lit up between the two bracelets, which made Phil yelp and Dan jump. But then Dan just looked at it in wonder, and then up at her with the same look. “You made these?” he gasped. “This is…literally the scariest thing that’s ever been this close to me, but it’s also so, so cool. Still a genius, I see.”

“Yeah, she’s still super intelligent as well as being beautiful,” Phil said proudly.

“That’s not going to work on me,” Rachel said. “And stop saying I’m beautiful, because I’m not. I’m super skinny and my hair won’t stay straight and I’m taller than any other girl my age! All that was probably super appealing, you know, in ancient times. But nowadays it just makes me look like a gawky mess.”

“Is that why you’ve got that whole punk thing going on?” Phil asked, gesturing towards her with his hands.

“Phil, that’s barely punk, she’s got half of her head in tiny braids, and she’s wearing a leather jacket and ripped leggings.”

“And fingerless gloves. And really tall high-heeled boots.”

“Yeah, and black lipstick, but that doesn’t really make her punk. It doesn’t even make her emo. And it definitely doesn’t make her goth.”

“Shut up, I don’t need to be told what I’m wearing!” Rachel cried, pressing a button on the remote. Sparks flew up their hands, causing both to gasp and jump in their chairs.

“Woah,” Dan whispered.

“Okay, ow,” Phil said through gritted teeth.

When they looked up she had a horrified look in her eyes and she’d dropped the remote, raising her hand towards her mouth. But she again shook herself and clamped her mouth shut determinedly. “Still proud of me?” she asked sharply. “That was a warning. I didn’t call you here so we could all catch up.” She bent down, swiftly picked the remote up, and slammed it down on the table with their phones.

“Then what are we here for?” Dan asked gently.

She pulled another folding chair out of the van and opened it in front of them. She flipped it so that it faced backwards, and then sat down, leaning her arms on the back of the chair, but still loosely holding her gun. “You don’t know?” she asked bitterly. “You don’t have any guess, at all?”

“I just have to ask one thing,” Phil asked. “You remember it all, right? Everything we ever did with you?”

She blinked. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Well supposedly Charlie wiped your memory when he left you with the police,” Dan said.

“Really,” she said. “That explains why everyone labelled me as an amnesia case, then. I thought it was just because I refused to answer any questions about where I came from. But no, I saw that memory eraser thing my first day here and I made a headband that would deflect it were it ever fired at me. Which is why I always wore that stupid thing.”

“So, it’s true?” Phil asked, sucking a breath in. “You remember it all?”

“Remember it all?” Rachel snapped, standing up, with the chair making a scraping noise as it was pushed away. “Remember it? Remember what? How you rescued me from a slave owner about to kill me? How you promised that I would study time travel so I could take over the machine for you? How you introduced me to _Pokemon_ and _Winnie-the-Pooh_ and _Lord of the Rings_ and _Undertale_ and _Mario Kart_? How you trusted me with the knowledge of Dan’s sleeping problem, which he still clearly has, and with the task of finding a way to cure Phil’s motion sickness? Never got around to completing that, you know why? Because you left me, that’s why, you used that explosion as an opportunity to ditch me, with not so much as a phone number, or an explanation of why you did it. So yeah, I remember. I remember, and I can’t just pretend it never happened, even if you can. I need to know why you led me on like that. I need to know why I wasn’t…” Her voice began to tremble, but she only had to pause for a second to make it steady again. “I need to know why I wasn’t good enough for you.” She strode forward, holding her gun out, until it was inches away from Phil’s face. She crouched down and looked him straight in the eye. “Because you can’t just go around ditching your problems and thinking they won’t still affect you.”

Phil had leaned back as far as he could, but he sighed at this last statement. “Believe me, I know that,” he said. “I tried. But not with you, I promise never with you.”

“We thought you were dead, darling,” Dan said softly. “Charlie wouldn’t even let us in the building; just said there was an explosion and you didn’t make it.”

She turned to face him, frowning. “And you believed him. Just like that.”

“Of course we did, he was our friend, and a freaking scientist. Why wouldn’t we believe him?”

“So.” She stood up, and made her way back to the chair, but she didn’t sit in it. “What? You strolled up, he said I was dead, and you just shrugged and turned around and went home? Moving on with your merry lives?”

“Rachel, that’s not fair, you have no idea what we’ve been through,” Phil said heatedly.

“What you’ve been through? Oh, well whatever it was, Phil, I’m sure it was worse than waking up alone and confused in a hospital, with a policeman asking where you came from, and then being shipped off to a foster institution, where you’re then picked up by two strangers? I believed in you, you know. I told the other kids there that you were coming for me, because I was sure that there must have been a mistake, and you were looking for me.”

“There was a mistake, Rach, and that mistake was that Charlie told us you were _dead_!” Phil cried. Dan nudged him, and Phil suddenly remembered that they’d been the ones to tell Charlie to tell them that.

“No,” Rachel said. “I don’t blame him for this at all. Because you knew I was alive. You must have known I was alive. I know you were supposed to come that day, and you were running late or something, when the explosion happened. It would have been so easy for you to just tell Charlie, welp, she’s probably a lost cause anyway, just get rid of her. What confuses me is why you continued to spy on me. I wouldn’t have resented you for what you did if I’d just known why you did it. Or even that you were going to do it at all!”

“Rachel, I don’t know how else to tell you, but we didn’t know!” Phil protested. “I swear we didn’t know! We’ve spent the past five years being eaten away with guilt because we let you die in some stupid explosion!”

“You want proof?” Rachel asked. “Here.” And she held up Dan’s pixel people keychain. Dan felt a wave of horror wash over him as he realized where she’d gotten it. “Found this in my room,” she said. “About a year after you left me. And someone had been in there, so try and tell me now that that wasn’t you.”

Dan bit his lip and looked over at Phil, who was staring at it in open-mouthed astonishment. “All this time,” he whispered. “All this time, until two days ago, there were two of those specific keychains in this timeline. So you _had_ to go back and leave it there.”

“You know we have a time machine, right?” Dan asked desperately. “We…when Phil saw you in that shop and suggested you were alive, we went back to see if you might be. I guess I left it there.”

“I concede that that is credible,” she said. “But that also would be a very easy way to convince me that that’s what happened, so you’ll forgive me for sticking with my theory.”

“But you already said it confused you as to why we would abandon you and then still keep tabs on you,” Phil pointed out.

“And that is why I’m now coming to you for answers.”

“Well, that is our answer!” Dan shouted. “And you’re not accepting it!”

“Well, fine, say that you’re telling the truth, and you actually thought I was dead because Charlie told you!” Rachel said. “You should have checked to make sure! Any normal person who cared would have been in denial, rushing to the body to make sure for themselves! But you just accepted it, not even coming to say goodbye, just letting him deal with the aftermath…”

“In our defense he did say that you’d blown up and there really wasn’t anything left,” Phil said.

Rachel glared. “So that was enough for you, was it. I know I’m smarter than I should be, and smarter than you in a lot of ways, but honestly, you two are so much more gullible than I gave you credit for.”

“It’s not gullible to trust a friend,” Phil huffed.

“Phil,” Dan said. “We should probably tell her.”

“Finally,” Rachel said. “The smartest thing you’ve said all day. Tell me what?”

“Tell her what?” Phil echoed. “About the fight? You think she’ll be satisfied with that answer?”

Rachel rolled her eyes. “I _know_ you were fighting, you idiots, don’t think that’s going to earn you any sympathy.”

“You don’t get it,” Dan said. “We were already on the verge of being torn apart. We were fighting so much about the best thing to do with you, and both of us were so sure our opinions were correct, that when Charlie just walked up to us and said you were dead, well, what do you think our natural reaction was? It wasn’t rational, I can tell you that.”

Rachel lowered her gun just a tiny bit and watched them, waiting for more.

“We snapped,” Phil said. “It was going to happen anyway, but suddenly with this grief and guilt piled on, we just attacked each other. And we had the first falling out we’d ever had in ten years of friendship, and essentially it ended with us…being over. I moved out, and that was the end of it. Because of you.”

She frowned. "If you think you can blame me for this somehow…”

“No,” Dan said. “We don’t. The point is, we didn’t just live our cushy lives and move on. We didn’t see each other, we didn’t keep in contact, we just remained with those terrible words and that heavy guilt between us, and so if you think you were living a hell, just know that we were, too.”

She swallowed. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“Maybe there is no feeling better in this situation,” Phil said. “But it’s not a cause to go full supervillain.”

“I’m not becoming a supervillain, and I have no intention of going in that direction. This is a revenge story, but only on you two. You two, who are worse than the entire world. Because the rest of the world has done nothing but ignore me, reject me, knock me down. I was bullied in my first school, after my foster parents took me in, and you know what? I broke that girl’s arm. We weren’t even living in London originally. We had to leave because I got expelled. So it’s fair for the world to treat me like it does, I mean I’ve done nothing to deserve anything else. But you, you let me think differently. You let me think you loved me, and that you cared, and were invested in my future. You let me think I was safe and secure, and was doing something insanely cool, and would want for nothing. And then you throw that all away and just dropped me back into the uncaring world!”

She slammed her hands down on the table, pressing the button that zapped their arms again, but though they both did cry out in pain again, neither really noticed it.

“Why did you let me think you cared?” She screamed. “I adored you two, don’t you know that? I looked you up, though, a couple months after. Turns out though that you were crazy famous with millions of other girls who loved you, so, what, was I just one out of millions? Is that why you thought you could trample on my feelings?”

“Rachel,” Dan sighed. “Those are just fans. We don’t know those millions of other girls, but believe me, we loved you just as much as you did us.”

“Liars, if you had you would have come looking for me!”

“Okay, so say we should have done that,” Phil said. “If we had, Rachel, believe me, if we thought there was a chance you’d survived, we would never have stopped searching, and we’d have rescued you from wherever you were.”

She looked away and pursed her lips, fighting to regain control of her voice. “I want to believe you,” she whispered. “I want so badly to know that you really didn’t. But I can’t, I can’t…I can’t just give it up simply because you tell me that. I’ve been lied to and betrayed too often for that.”

“Wow,” Phil said sympathetically. “I wouldn’t have thought your foster parents were so terrible to you. Their house seemed so nice.”

She looked at him sharply. “My foster parents?” she said. “They’re incredible, and they definitely haven’t done any of the terrible things that everyone else in my life has.”

“And yet you’re going to go ahead with murder anyway?” Phil asked.

“I never said anything about murder.”

“The way you’re waving that gun around, kinda tells a different story.”

“Phil!” Dan said. He turned back to Rachel. “I know you’re smarter than that,” he said. “I know wouldn’t actually kill us and then go back to your couple like nothing happened.”

“No,” she said. “Because I don’t plan on going back to them at all.”

There was a pause. “You don’t?” Dan asked. “But you just said they’re incredible.”

“Yeah,” she said. “And I want to keep them that way.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Phil asked.

“It means they want to adopt me, okay?” Rachel snapped. “And it was the happiest day of my life when they told me, because before that I was sure they’d never actually go through with it. But I’ll be seventeen in a couple months, and they can’t do it once I turn eighteen, so they basically said it was now or never.”

“So what’s the problem?” Phil asked.

A wave of realization hit Dan, and he closed his eyes. “Oh no.”

“Oh, yes,” Rachel said, looking at him. “The thought of that is so perfect that I don’t want anything to mess it up, ever. I want to leave someone while they still want me, for once. I don’t want to be around the day they realize they made a mistake, and turn me back out into the street, or tell me they’re going out for the day and just never come back. I’ve had nightmare scenarios of you two doing that for five years, so I don’t need the image of them doing it, too.”

Phil felt tears pricking his eyes. “So you’re running away from them?”

“I don’t want anyone but me deciding how my life goes,” she said in an angry whisper.

Rachel,” Phil swallowed. “I know you’re hurting, and I get that it’s because of us. But I think…you’re not just here for answers, or revenge, or closure. That’s not really what you want.”

Her hand began shaking. “And how do you know so much of how I want?” She hissed.

“You want to be loved, Rach. And I know that because Dan was exactly the same way when I found him. He just didn’t have the psychopath streak in him and honestly I’m not really sure why you do, except that I have no idea who your parents were so maybe it’s genetic…”

“And the point is, Phil?” Dan asked.

“The point is that I get it, you were scared of being unloved and rejected when you thought Dan and I were doing that to each other, when we were fighting in front of you, and so you acted out. And then your worst fears were confirmed, and now you’re here just wanting so desperately to hurt us, and yet not actually wanting to, because…you still want that. You still want to be loved. You still love us.”

Her hand shook so hard that she dropped the gun. “I hated when you were fighting,” she whispered.

“I know, dear,” Phil sighed. “Though really, all we were ever arguing over was what was best for you, and we broke apart after you died because we blamed ourselves for causing it.”

Yeah,” Dan said. “Yeah, that was the root of it all, wasn’t it? We separated just because we loved you so much. That was pretty stupid of us, on reflection. So go ahead, do whatever you need to do to us. We deserve it.”

She stood there for several minutes, taking big gulps of air as she tried to stop shaking, and looked from one face to another. But if she was looking for any fear, or hatred, or untruths, she wasn’t going to find any. She slowly stooped down to pick up her gun, and Dan and Phil braced for the worst.

But she didn’t use it. She placed it on the table, and slowly picked up the remote, pressing a button, and then dropped to the floor and burst into tears, pressing her hands to her face.

The beam between their cuffs disappeared and the bands loosened, and Dan and Phil ripped them off and ran towards the girl on the floor. Phil was the first to reach her, and he gathered her up in his arms, with Dan embracing her from behind. She didn’t move her hands from her face, but she leaned into them, and only cried harder.

Dan honestly wondered how long she would have kept at it if they didn’t hear a siren outside. All three stiffened at the sound, and Rachel raised her head. “You did call the police?” she said.

“You saw our phones, you know we couldn’t have!”

“PJ,” Phil sighed. “If Sophie told him what we said, then he probably figured it out. I’m sorry, Rachel, if we—.”

“It’s okay,” Rachel said, sighing as well. “I don’t really love the idea of going back to my foster parents if I’m still running from the police.”

Phil brushed the loose hair on her head aside, and Dan used his thumbs to wipe her tears away. “So you’re going back to them?” Phil asked gently.

She nodded. “Now or never,” she said, smiling weakly. “Who am I kidding, I’m never going to have it this good again.”

Dan kissed the top of her head. “Look whose all grown up,” he said. “We’ll be there when they let you go. I promise, this time we’ll be there waiting for you.”

She went very quietly, and though Dan and Phil couldn’t listen in on their interrogation, they did ask a different officer if she was likely to be released that morning, and he said yes, as long as she cooperated. So they waited, Phil swinging his legs while Dan looked at his phone and tried not to yawn.

“You can do that, you know,” Phil said. “The yawning thing.”

“It really can’t be good for my jaw to yawn this much, though. I’m sick of this problem, Phil, I want it to be gone.”

“Well,” Phil said. “If we’re living together again, then that’s kind of in my job description.”

“Yeah, but I mean really gone. Like where I don’t need to rely on you anymore just to sleep.”

Phil nodded. “I know that’s what you meant.”

Dan smiled. He looked up when an older couple walked into the room and spoke with the receptionist, before sitting down near Dan and Phil. Dan nudged Phil, who looked up as well and squinted. “You think that’s them?” Phil whispered.

“I mean we have no claims for thinking that,” Dan said. “Other than they look like their house.”

Phil giggled. “They do, don’t they?”

“Should we go over there?”

“Noooo I think we should wait for Rachel to come out and introduce us.”

“Good, that’s what I wanted to hear. Besides, it’d be crazy awkward if it wasn’t them.”

“Yeah.” Phil looked at them again. “It totally is, though.”

“I know.”

They were silent for a long time, idly lost in their own thoughts, as the couple seemed to be as well. But eventually Dan looked over at Phil and said slowly, “You know there’s something we could do, right now.”

“What?”

“We could change the future again.”

“How?”

“We can go tell our past selves not to fight. Not to act out in front of her. Or just tell Charlie to let us know she’s alive. Technically we were originally the ones who decided to tell him to lie, anyway. Even if we only did it because we knew it’s what we always did.”

“You mean…erase the past five years.”

“…Yeah.”

 “Make it so that we never have to live apart.”

“Yep.”

“Ensure that she doesn’t go through any trauma that could turn her into a borderline supervillain.”

“Exactly.”

Phil paused for a very long moment, tilting his head, before finally saying, “Nope, we’re stuck with this life.”

“We are?”

“Yes. Because if we’d gone back and changed it, none of us would be here right now.”

Dan smiled. “Just as well, I guess. This was a convenient way for us to end YouTube.”

“What?” Phil asked. “We can’t go back to YouTube?”

“I mean you can, but I don’t think we’ve got enough of a following anymore. Though I have been informed that there will be some of them that live forever.”

Phil scoffed. “Since when has a large following ever mattered to us?”

“True,” Dan said. “I just have sort of enjoyed living outside of the public eye.”

Phil nodded. “I guess we couldn’t be YouTubers forever. Everything has to end, so I suppose it’s good we got that over with.”

“Some things have to end,” Dan corrected. “But not our friendship. Not Dan and Phil as it started out. The universe tried, Phil, but it couldn’t keep us apart forever.”

Phil smiled. “No,” he said. “No, it couldn’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...I'm perfectly aware that this is a pretty good place to end it, and if I weren't such a weak person I would have just left it here. But, even though I've been warned against it, I can't resist the urge to tie up every loose end in a neat little bow. If you like this as an ending, consider it the ending. If you're prepared to read the cheesiest epilogue in the history of epilogues, that will be posted tomorrow. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	14. Epilogue

Rachel didn’t know why Dan and Phil had asked her to meet them at the warehouse on the day she was officially adopted, but she didn’t question it. She had a pretty good idea of what it would involve, anyway, because why else would any of them ever want to return to that spot in particular?

The cab pulled up to the same street where she had always imagined the spot she’d first seen them was, and climbed out. Dan and Phil were standing in front of the warehouse, and the first thing she noticed when she looked at Dan was the lack of darkness surrounding his eyes. “Look at you,” she smiled, placing her hands on his cheeks. “You look so _healthy_.”

He and Phil laughed. “Yeah, so turns out sleeping regularly is like super good for you or whatever,” Dan said. “Who knew?”

Phil grabbed her in a hug. “Happy Adoption Day,” he said. “Or, you know, whatever the technical term is.”

She smirked and rolled her eyes. “Okay, it’s not that big of a deal,” she said. “And I’m still a rebellious punk, so I’m sure they and I will all regret this day real soon.”

“Well you’ll be eighteen in less than a year, and they won’t be able to tell you what to do anymore,” Dan reminded her.

“Is that all you brought me here to say?” she asked. “You couldn’t have invited to your flat again to say that?”

Dan pushed open the warehouse doors. “No, because really we brought you here to discuss this.”

Rachel sighed. “This again? Seriously? I loved the machine at the time, I really did, but I think you may have burned that bridge when…”

“We’re going to destroy it,” Phil said breezily.

She looked up at him, and then at Dan. Both were smiling. “Really?” she asked. “You’re not…you don’t want me to take it over and figure out how to get it to respond to me?”

Dan shrugged. “Charlie was right, it’s a little before it’s time. And none of us are enjoying it, and none of us invented it, so it’s not like we’re committing a crime to society by destroying it.”

“In fact, we’re probably saving it,” Phil said. “Anyway, but before we do that, we wanted to know if…you wanted to go back and see what happened to your family.”

She gave a slight frown. “They were horrible to me, why would I want that?”

Phil shrugged. “Because they were your family, and you could, you know, see why they acted like they did, or see whether they died horribly, or if they ever regretted giving you up.”

Rachel thought for a moment, but then confidently shook her head. “Nope. They never were my family, and they gave up the right to see me again.”

“I thought you’d decided we gave up that right, too,” Dan said gently. “And you came back to us.”

“It’s different with you,” Rachel said. “And it would have been different if it was my parents who’d sold me. But they didn’t. My uncle sold my mother and my father and I, and…they didn’t last that long.”

She looked up to see Dan and Phil staring worriedly at her. “So you really always were an orphan,” Dan said quietly.

“Yeah, but I’m not anymore, and I don’t care what happened to my uncle’s family, and I don’t care whether they ever regretted it or not. I don’t need them. I’ve got you, and now I’ve got an official mother and father.”

“Good,” Phil said. “Because I really didn’t want to ever have to feel sick on that thing again.”

“Shut up,” Dan said, laughing quietly. He handed a small remote with a single button to Rachel. “You remember that?” he asked. “Charlie said it was one of the things you were working on at the end there. He finished it, so, it’ll disintegrate that van now.”

Rachel took it and looked up at them to see them smiling at her. She looked at the van one last time before smashing her hand on the button. A ray of white light shot out of the remote and hit the van, which lit up the entire warehouse for a moment before collapsing into a pile of dust. As soon as it had Dan swiftly took the button out of Rachel’s hand and smashed in on the ground. “Yeah, I’m not letting you have any further access to that,” he said.

“Well,” Phil said. “That was definitely satisfying.”

“So that’s it?” Rachel asked. “What are you gonna do with it now?”

Dan shrugged. “Not our warehouse. Never was. It was Adam’s, and he left us the machine, nothing else. We were just lucky the scientists were willing to stick around.”

“Cool,” Rachel said, shoving her hands in her pockets and turning away. “Well, I liked living there, but I’m really not going to miss this warehouse.”

“Stop,” Phil moaned. “We feel guilty enough, don’t remind us that we actually made you live in a warehouse.”

“Please, it was only for like, what, nine months? It wouldn’t have been good as a permanent solution, I guess, but at the time it had the coolness equivalent of living in a bunker or a tree house or something. Also let’s not forget where I’d just come from.”

“Do you ever still think about that time?” Dan asked softly. “Do you still have trouble sleeping because of…that?”

She shook her head. “No. Honestly a lot of those memories have faded, though obviously there’s some that aren’t going away any time soon. But no, I definitely got over my sleeping problem a lot faster than you did.” She paused. “Somehow. Never thought I would at the time, but here we are.”

“And that’s the moral for the past several weeks,” Phil laughed. “We didn’t know we’d make it this far, but now we’re on a…um…” he paused and looked at Dan.

“I’m not helping you reference a cheesy song that we wrote six years ago,” Dan said.

Phil huffed. “Well, it ended with ‘here we are’ is all, so I thought it’d be appropriate.”

“Still not helping you reference it.”

Rachel snickered. “Well, your audience looked like they enjoyed it.”

They both glanced at her. “You watched our tour DVD?” Phil asked.

“Of course I watched it; I watched everything I could find once I figured out who you guys were. I still can’t believe you never told me you were famous.”

“Sorry,” Dan said. “That just never seemed like a relevant topic for discussion.”

“Yeah, and for the record, neither of us told our parents about Youtube, they all had to find out through different sources, too,” Phil said.

“Well, I thought you guys were great,” Rachel said. “Oh, speaking of parents, mine want you to come back to our house because they have cake or something.” She rolled her eyes. “They know how old I am, right?”

“Hey!” Phil said, pushing his finger in her face. “You are never too old for cake.”

“Maybe, but I think Haribo tastes nicer anyway.”

Dan pulled a gift bag out of his backpack and handed it to her. “Yeah, we figured you’d say that.”

Rachel desperately tried not to smile as she took the gift bag, but completely failed. But she was determined not to rip it open until a respectable amount of time had passed. “I’m sorry I threatened to kill you,” she said, hoping it sounded more casual than she felt.

Phil smirked. “You really didn’t, you know. I think we were scared at the time, but really all you ever did was say you weren’t going to kill us.”

“By pointing a gun at us,” Dan put in.

“Oh, that wouldn’t have killed you. It just let out this sonic wave that knocked down any doors that might have been in my way, and served as a stun gun at most.”

Dan sighed. “And I thought we raised you better than this.”

“Well, you know that I was a psychopath before I even met you. So was Felix though, for the record. But now you’ll have to compete with my parents to see who trains me out of my psychotic habits first, you know.”

“Wow,” Dan said. “Definitely didn’t know we’d ever get to that point.”

“But here we are,” Phil said.

“Yep,” Dan laughed. “But here we are. And I think all three of us definitely didn’t know we’d make it this far, but…”

“No,” Rachel said. “Stop your cheesy and profound saying right there, Mr. danisnotonfire.”

“You want me to revoke my Haribo?” Dan asked, raising his eyebrows and holding his hand out.

“Dan, the point of a gift is to not tell her what’s in it,” Phil protested.

“Well, I didn’t tell her what else is in it.”

Rachel knew that she would definitely start crying if they stood there and talked any longer, and under no circumstances would she let her edgy façade drop enough to allow that. Again. So she just put one arm around each of them and laughed. “Okay guys, you know I love you, but there’s plenty of time to act like you’re five when you’re eating the cake at home than my parents insisted upon.”

She looked up at them to see them smiling. “What?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Dan said. “That was just probably a really satisfying sentence for you to say.”

“Yeah, it had all kinds of nice words in it,” Phil said. “Love, and parents, and home. And cake of course.”

And then the tears did start coming for Rachel, and she put her hand up to cover her mouth. “Shut up,” she said, in a voice that she absolutely refused to let crack.

And they did, but they continued smiling at her so tenderly and knowingly that she punched them. “Oh, stop,” she said, in response to their protests. “My parents will do a lot worse to you if they find out you made me cry today. So let’s go and see what happens.”


End file.
